How normal is sibling-on-sibling savagery? It’s a question I asked myself last week while watching two small children fight, Mike Tyson-style, on Instagram Reels.
The kids, maybe four and two, wore boxing gloves and squared off on a grippy, padded floor. The older sister was thumping her brother like her life depended on it. His retaliation attempts, while honourable, were largely futile – age was on her side. Still, his spirit didn’t break. Every time she totalled him, he got back up, ready for more.
It was addictive to watch – not just for their agility, but because it transported me, like a whiff of forgotten perfume, to my childhood.
Growing up, my older sister was my archnemesis. I can pinpoint the moment it began: my fifth birthday. I went to the toilet, and when I came back, all of my friends were gone from the lounge room. I panicked. Had they gone home? Without saying goodbye? No. Worse. They were in my sister’s bedroom, hanging out with her instead of me. My heart sank. I knew I’d lost them. As any younger sibling will attest, you’ll never be more entertaining than an older sibling with a cooler room and a lava lamp.
Her version of our villain origin story would read differently. She’d probably say it started when I stole her Motorola Razr, opened the “voice recordings” folder and found a clip of her breathily singing Jessica Simpson’s With You. It was the kind of blackmail material a younger sibling can only dream of. I played it to Mum and Nana. They both laughed – a rare reaction, given they’d hate for either of us to feel embarrassed for expressing ourselves. Unfortunately, despite their empathy, a tone-deaf rendition of “with nothin’ but a T-shirt on” was comedy gold. My sister walked in and her face went so red it almost turned purple. She was livid. And so, in her mind, it began.
Our fighting got progressively worse as time wore on. The smallest of slights would set off explosive brawls. A front seat “dibsed”, a remote control hogged, a McDonald’s french fry secretly snuck before we got home. Each petty win kept the flame of our feud alive.
On rare occasions, our altercations would spill out on to the street. This was typically when my sister would refuse to drive me to school. Banshee-level screaming would ensue, followed by some light kicking through the window.
I genuinely thought no siblings in Australia were capable of fighting as ferociously as we did – until I posted the boxing toddlers to my Instagram Story with the caption: “Me and my sister over a Kookai top.” The post exploded. My DMs lit up. Suddenly, I had hundreds of similarly harrowing tales.
When I mentioned chasing my sister with kitchen scissors, someone replied: “Endless leg kicks when they’re above you. Only way to win.” Some stories unlocked repressed memories. “My brother used to chase us with a knife, then smear tomato sauce on himself and play dead,” said one person. “I think that’s why I’m great in emergencies.” Me too! I once staged my own murder scene so my parents would think my sister killed me before they got home.
Early-2000s technology was a major trigger. Rows over the family computer were common. One sister smashed her brother’s Xbox and scattered the pieces across a 4km radius, so Xbox fragments haunted him wherever he went. One girl broke her sister’s finger while watching Charmed, but only let her cry during the ad breaks.
Psychological warfare was rife. One woman’s sister told her a bath bomb was a tablet she “had to consume”. A four-year-old was convinced by her brothers to “take a shit in the backyard at a family BBQ”, for reason unknown. She followed through, quite literally. Another sibling was told he’d been found at a servo wrapped in a Subway footlong.
While all of these stories sound borderline deranged, almost everyone who submitted them sounded glad to have had the experience. The white-hot panic of being chased around the kitchen island with a sharp object? That must breed resilience. I’d like to think it was character-building. I truly feel like no one can hurt me as badly as my sister did. There’s power in that.
Even at our worst, there was always one rule: only we were allowed to terrorise each other. When some boys stole my bike from the milk bar in primary school, my sister chased them down, gave them a spray and retrieved my two wheels. Years later, on one of the rare occasions we went clubbing together, we were each other’s bodyguards. I’ll never forget the rage that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside me when I saw a man grab her for a dance against her will. I kicked off and he got kicked out. My sister and I danced in peace and, naturally, argued in a taxi home.
Is it possible to move on from this dynamic? For full-on, lifelong fighters, sometimes it takes a family emergency for you to call tools down. It happened for my sister and me during Covid. Our dad – the man whose incandescent temper we surely inherited – was diagnosed with cancer. It shifted something in the family dynamic. Fighting, while at times horrible, was our default setting. When we were forced to reflect on the possibility of losing him, a new normal emerged. It finally became clear that we wouldn’t always be fortunate enough to spoil the peace of our nuclear family, however dysfunctional.
The decision to form a truce after 26 years of full-pelt warfare wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t acknowledged with some grand gesture, a big apology or by “hugging it out”. Our hatred just silently slipped away. I guess I felt as though my parents finally deserved to experience having children who didn’t hate each other. My dad is fine now. And my sister and I? We are even better.
Lucinda Price is an author and comedian who goes by the name Froomes
