CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: SIBBLING RIVALRY IS A TERMINAL CONDITION AMONG FAMILY

I helped my older brother celebrate his birthday this past weekend.

Jim and I have had the typical brother-sister relationship: After several years of trying half-heartedly to kill each other, we've settled, reasonably comfortably, into a truce.

I feel compelled to point out that we also live in separate parts of the state. This helps maintain the peace, I'm sure.

And we've grown up, sort of. We can spend a few hours in the same room, and when the time's up, nobody is bleeding or crying.

That's real progress.

Louie Anderson, one of my favorite stand-up comics, used to say that older brothers are like terrorists: You never know when or where, or even why, they're going to strike.

You just know they will.

Jim rarely resorted to outright violence when we were kids. He had other, more sinister methods, like psychological torture.

Younger sisters, I suppose, are the guerrilla fighters in the equation. We use whatever weapons, including tears and whining, that we happen to have at hand.

Here's a f'r-instance. When I was 11 or so, I went trick-or-treating with my then-best friend in the entire world, Lesley Anne Tiepelman, whose grandmother lived across the street from us.

My Halloween costumes weren't what you could call inspired. Most years I was either a witch or a gypsy. The costumes were pretty much the same from year to year, but when I was a witch, I wore green eyeshadow and when I was a gypsy, I wore dangly earrings.

This particular year I was a gypsy. Jim, who at 15 had reached the pinnacle of adolescent obnoxiousness, took one look at my costume and burst out laughing.

"That's the stupidest costume I've ever seen," he said, or something similarly big-brotherish.

I ignored him and sailed out into the night, candy bag in hand.

But when you're smaller and younger, you learn you need the element of surprise, because you don't have the gift of greater strength.

So when I got back from my hour or so of begging candy from the neighbors, I marched up to Jim (still seated comfortably in the big brown recliner and hypnotized by the television set) and kicked him in the shin as hard as I could.

And I was wearing hard-soled shoes.

"Ga-aa--ouch!" he screamed, or something to that effect.

"I told you not to make fun of her costume," my mother said, not bothering to look up from her book.

And I marched up to my room and ate all of the really good candy before he could raid my goody bag.

Jim and I are too far apart in age -- four years -- for any serious sibling rivalry to have taken place. He was secure in being the only son, and I was resigned to -- and sometimes elated by -- being the baby of the family.

But that doesn't mean we didn't spend several years trying to annoy each other to an early grave.

There's still time for that, but not much.

When I e-mailed him to ask what he wanted for his birthday, he suggested "golf stuff" and the new John Fogerty CD.

I couldn't bring myself to actually go into a golf store (it's not a sport; it's a cult), so I got him a book about golf. And the CD.

The boy who used to kidnap my teddy bear and hold it for ransom when he spent his allowance too soon wants golf stuff.

It's hell getting old.

But there are some advantages. I've learned that I no longer have to annoy him just to have something to do. I don't have to look askance at his ties. I don't have to make snide comments about receding hairlines or Rogaine.

I can be nice to him if I want to.

I said, if.

I might even share my Halloween candy with him.

Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.