It is important to remember that my sister is the awful one and I am the cute one. Try not to forget that. Guys used to make that mistake all the time when we were in high school and they lived to regret the mistake. She is awful and I am cute.
The other important thing to remember is that things were not easy in our family growing up. My sister always got an extra helping at dinner because my parents said she was a "lost cause." At the same time I got limited portions, rations if you will, because they wanted me to become a model and the goose with the golden egg the family needed to get a new house and a Mercedes.
They became disjointed when I dropped out of college, turned down an offer from some sleazy perfume promoter and moved in with my boyfriend Rex. He had a motor home over at Cozy Acres Trailer Park and he had been out on his own since he was fifteen. My parents didn't think much of him and my sister thought even less. Most of the time she didn't think at all. They usually plug her into an old coffee percolator so she doesn't have to even try. They have always gone so easy on her.
Rex was only really a barrel of laughs when he had a few beers in him. Most of the time he worked odd jobs, on road crews and cleaning warehouses in the middle of the night just to make ends meet. It wasn't going all that well for him, and I volunteered to find a job, even though he liked me to stand in front of the trailer in tight pink shorts and a t-shirt that said "Rex's Girlfriend" on it all day long. It was good for his image around the trailer park and it worked for me, but now I had to get a job and help him out financially. We could barely even afford Spam anymore.
P. Morgan Industries was a construction company in town and Rex had worked a few times on their projects, mostly carrying bricks and lumber around. They seemed to like me, even though I had no formal training in typing or answering the phone in a businesslike manner. They just thought I was a good fit for the front of their office and that if I gave their business contacts and clients a cup of coffee and a smile they would have an easier time signing deals.
Hey, I was going to be a model, maybe even on television hawking lipstick and cruise lines, so this was a pretty decent deal right up my alley. I got this neat professional looking business suit, but my boss Larry said he wanted me to wear short skirts and low-cut blouses as often as possible. "Unless you are spotting," he said, which was the only thing he ever said to me that made me want to vomit. He was otherwise a pretty decent guy. So, I agreed, and after a while he started picking out my outfits for me, taking me out to dinner and even offered to take me skiing. He was so good to me and so generous.
The guys were so friendly there, and they would always ask me to smile or get something out of the bottom drawers of the office filing cabinets for them. Sometimes they brought me stuffed animals, flowers and photographs of themselves in swimming pools. It was pretty radical and this stuff was like a bonus in addition to my salary, which allowed Rex to retire from working and build a bar in the trailer. He had neighbors over all the time and the girls from the all-female junior college were frequent guests.
It was a pretty good life while it lasted. Rex and I split up after five years together, and what sucked was that we broke up on Christmas Eve. I had to go back to my family with a broken heart for their Christmas present. My awful sister was drinking excitedly from her new waterbed all day that Christmas and I couldn't bear to watch. My parents shipped me off to a very strict modeling school run by former military nurses in Italy and I lost my receptionist job. The women there were tough and rigid but very fair. They knew how to bring out the best in a person, and that's how I became the cover girl I am today. Look for me, because I am probably smiling at you from behind the cover of a magazine in the supermarket check-out line right now.