It is a yearly tradition at Neopoleon to recognize my sister's contributions to world of aging by taking the time to wish her a happy birthday here on the blog.

It is also typical to follow up the wishings of birthday happiness with some recollection of my time spent with her in the time of my youth. It works toward honoring the person that is Maya Blyth, as well as going a long way to explaining why I turned out the way I did.

Being one year and three months older than me, my sister had a profound impact on my life. She taught me many things, and one of the greatest lessons I ever learned from her was this: Philanthropy is the greatest way to say "I love you very much" to the rest of the human race, and my sister was, like, the queen of philanthropy.

We went to a private school that was populated with the children of the very wealthy. There were eight poor kids in the entire school, and we represented 25% of said demographic. While we had grown up in a state of poverty that left us happy to receive a sliver of potato in our Christmas stockings, most of our friends were getting allowances in excess of $500.00 a week when they were only eight to ten years old. If you've ever wondered how rich kids get hooked on drugs like coke, you can probably look first to their allowances. Seriously. It's gotta be hard to spend that kind of money in a week when you're that age, so you turn to the big ticket items like weapons and hard drugs.

My sister, then, was a one-person currency-liberation army. She singlehandedly prevented dozens of kids from spending their weekly allowances on cocaine and machine guns. She did this very simply, as well: By taking their money from them when they weren't looking.

She did what she thought was right. These kids had way too much money, and she was bringing balance to the world.

On top of it, because she's deaf, she knew she'd never get caught. Nobody ever says, "It was the deaf girl." She's always innocent. And my sister knew that, so she used her power for good.

This is roughly how it began...

Eventually, though, she developed a problem. While her goal was to save these kids from themselves, she had amassed a small fortune during her work as a saint-in-training. The last thing she wanted was to get in trouble for doing a bit of good in the world, so we started skipping school to spend the money as quickly as we could. I only got involved because I was so impressed with her kind and selfless behavior. Sometimes, you get a chance to be a part of something much bigger than yourself, and you either take that chance, or you let it slip away. I took it. I wanted to help people, so I followed my sister's lead.

Before long, though, my mom started to suspect that something odd was going on...

Children are geniuses. They act well outside the normal boundaries of adult human behavior, and it's sometimes very difficult to explain why things happen the way they do. Like that time your mom caught you making a diorama of the first man on the moon out of your own feces. Remember how hard that was to explain? Yeah. I bet you're looking at these words and nodding. It was pretty hard.

My mom thought that my sister needed intervention from a higher power, so she called the cops. My poor, little, ten year old, deaf sister. My sister who wanted to help these poor little bastards at school who were signing their own death warrants in liquid gold each week.

And so the cops arrived. But my sister was ready...

Don't go up against a young deaf girl. You will not win.

You.

Will.

Not.

Win.

But that's this year's birthday post. I know that, if I didn't tell the story of my sister's triumphs, nobody else would have.

Happy birthday, sis. I know you only wanted to help. And you did.

While mom and the cops might not have understood, you kept those kids off drugs. And you kept them from blowing each other's heads off with automatic weapons by keeping their funds to a minimum.

And the big screen TV was cool, too.