I woke up as the small rivulets of sunshine snaked their way through the parted curtains. My head, used to waking up even before the sun, reacted with the usual vacation fuzziness. I padded my way downstairs and opened the fridge. Stuck on the door was a small pink Post-it note, "Dear Jem, Be a dear and do the laundry before I get home. Thanks, Mom."

Great, laundry, the bane of my existence. Well, maybe I could find a peaceful way of convincing my sister to do this most hateful of chores, and if that didn't work, there was always force. Being a big sister does have some advantages.

I grabbed some breakfast and headed back to bed for a nice read-in. I was reading Stephen King's The Stand and was up to the best part. Suddenly, the quiet was shattered by a terrible crash from downstairs. "Hey, Missa, watcha doin'?" I called out, but there was no reply.

Just in case some great injury had befallen my sister, I ran downstairs in a jiffy. She lay on the floor covered in dirty laundry. "What are you ...?" The words caught in my throat. Before my eyes was the most horrible of sights. My father's dirty work shirt held Melissa in a choke-hold while a pair of pants tied her hands with my gym socks. I did the first thing that came to mind: I picked up the detergent and fired.

After the laundry was done, we realized just how close to disaster we had come. To this day I always do the laundry on time. You see it's true what they say: dirty laundry really can walk around, and sometimes it attacks. 1