When I was growing up, I always wanted a sister. My three brothers refused to play dolls with me, and when I asked one of them to paint my nails, he held the brush sideways and globs of nail polish dropped all over my hand. "Don't do it like you're painting a house," I yelled at him, "It's supposed to look pretty!" Although I never got a sister, I now know how to paint my own nails. And looking back, my brothers taught me some other important lessons as well:

1. You can live off of pizza and french fries. Forget the food pyramid: my younger brother's diet is more like a one-dimensional triangle consisting of three basic food groups: carbs, carbs, and carbs. He's still trying to convince me that Ketchup is a vegetable.

2. Ladies: never ask a man about his power tools. Or what a "drill bit" is. Trust me--I'm saving you from a 30-minute lecture on the minutiae of drilling. I stopped listening after the first two seconds because it was almost as boring as going to Home Depot, and I didn't think anything could top that.

3. If a sentence begins with the words, "Don't freak out", proceed to freak out. Like, now. Either someone is missing a finger, or your favorite Barbie doll no longer has a head.

4. If a sentence begins with the words, "About your fish...", say goodbye to Princess Esmeralda. She's now on a journey to the Pacific Ocean.

5. If you value your privacy, don't leave your diary on your bed. I tried to deter my brothers from reading my diary by writing terrifying warnings on every page. They usually went something like this: If you are reading this and you are not me, stop right now. Or else. I'm serious. You are so mean. I hate you.

For some reason, this didn't have the menacing effect I was hoping for, so I came up with a much better strategy: I hid the diary on a bookshelf, where I knew my brothers would never look.

6. If it's too quiet in the house, someone is probably reading your aforementioned diary. I eventually stopped writing in my diary--it was much less stressful.

7. If someone gives you something for free, there's always a catch. A very spicy catch, in my case. I can't count the number of times that my brothers kindly shared their chips with me, only to find out they were "Extreme Jalapeno" flavor. With my tongue on fire, I would splutter, "Ugh! Why aw you tho mean?!" which usually elicited quite a bit of sniggering.

8. Your friends might have different interests than you. Just because you and your brothers religiously watch WWE SmackDown every Thursday night does not mean that your friends know who The Undertaker is. And they probably won't think your John Cena action figure is cool.

9. The early bird gets the worm. In my house, Friday night dinner was kind of like feeding time at the zoo. As soon as my mom put the food on the table, everyone hovered over the brisket, trying to get first dibs. My dad would call out, "Attack!

" while my mom muttered wearily, "It was never like this in my house." (She had one sister.) I quickly learned that if I came late to the meal, I was pretty much out of luck.

10. No matter how much you want to kill them sometimes, your siblings will probably end up being your best friends. But I'm still bitter about my fish.