Sometimes I pity my sister for being a victim. My poor unsuspecting victim. Time after time.

Before you lynch me for engaging in some monstrous practice, let me continue with my story.

Among my father's many traits that I inherited, one that other family members recall most  is my childhood propensity to play pranks with a nicely packaged element of horror. (I guess I was a child prodigy insofar as gothic humor was concerned.)

Ever since I can remember, from a young child of 6 until I was a gangling 14 year old, I was always on the lookout for a chance to play a naughty prank on a family member.

Sometimes I tricked my older brother -- like when I switched all the contents of his cabinet drawers (clothes, underwear, socks, hankies) with mine. But since he was the eldest, there was always a good chance that he'd get revenge by pulling authority and smacking my ass.

Sometimes I tricked my younger brother -- like when I chewed orange rinds and stuck the icky pulp on his side of the bed, then told Mama he did it. Or when I egged him to ruin the gilded lettering on our piano so that ROBINSON became POP NSON. (I'll blog about this later.)

But since he was the youngest and sickly, there was always a good chance that he'd blurt out the truth, and my parents would later pour fire and brimstone on me.

And so, more often than not, I turned to my sister as the perfect victim -- my lovely, gullible, uncomplaining, and oh so charmingly diplomatic victim. (Let's call her Isabel.) She didn't show anger at my pranks, didn't tell our parents, and most of the time, we both enjoyed a good laugh after my pranks played out at her expense.

(Isn't it obvious yet? I'm crazily in love with my sister, who is the best sister in the world if only because she's the silent shock absorber of my relentless lunatic whims.)

I wasn't really conscious of this pattern -- maybe I blocked it out of my mind -- until a few years ago, when my sister reminded me.

"Really? Was I really that bad and naughty to you?" I ask her with genuine incredulity.

"Why, you forgot all about those... those... (she'd search her mental database for the most powerful word)... those inhumane acts that you perpetrated?"

"Like what?" My curiosity is piqued now. I really don't recall much.

"Remember that gift that you said was a beautiful sleeping dragonfly? Inside a letter envelope? And you said to open it carefully because otherwise the dragonfly might wake up and fly away?"

I laugh heartily, because now I remember. It was a toothpick-on-twisted-rubber-band contraption that jumped out with a rattling sound when you opened the envelop.

Isabel would jog my memory about a few other memorable pranks. Ghost shadows behind the door. Fake plastic but repulsive-looking poo on her pillow. Harmless caterpillar-like furballs landing behind her neck. Ideas that I picked up from my comicbooks, from friends, from the fertile bacteria-rich soils of my young lunatic mind.

And always, she would recall them with fondness and laughter, not anger and annoyance.

Even when I was in my late 20's, Isabel recalls, my so-called aural projection would sometimes walk to and fro outside her room -- at a time when I was clearly someplace else, like, in some mountain range 300 kilometers away.

"But that wasn't a prank!" I explain to her in mock protest. "I was down with malaria that time."

"Well, to me it was still you hovering and playing tricks with my mind," she replies.

"So, what do you think was my most memorable prank?" I ask her.

"Do you recall Papa's old shortwave portable radio? And your Morse Code?" she asks in rhetorical reply. And I had to laugh. Yes, that was one fun prank.

And Isabel proceeds to tell the story.

I am in 4th grade, and starting to become a science-and-tech nerd. Once, down with a supposedly three-day flu that extended for a week, I'm so bored with enforced bed rest, that I think I'd make use of the time by learning Morse Code, and practice it by listening to short-wave transmissions that came in rapid di-di-dit-dit-dah-dah-di-dit fashion...

Lunchtime comes and goes, and I'm not very successful in decoding anything intelligible. The transmissions are so rapid. I'm starting to get bored again. Luckily, however, Isabel (who is in 6th grade) arrives from school, and goes straight to check on me as I sprawl on the unmade bed in my pajamas.

"What's up? Ya doin' anything interesting?" she asks.

"Yeah... Morse Code. I'm trying to decode foreign messages." My inner prankster is hard at work, whirring and clicking like mad.

"And... have you discovered anything? When do the Russians plan to invade?"

A lovely crazy notion starts to stir inside me. I break into a smile.

"Shussh... don't talk, Sis. I have to concentrate. Go away now. I'll call you when I decode this..." I adopt my most serious mien, my ears glued to the portable radio, my ballpen rapidly jotting down the dots and dashes of Morse.

Isabel keeps quiet and watches. After a few minutes, I hand her a clean sheet containing long lines of Morse dots and dashes. I ask her to decode it so she can practice too.

It takes her some more minutes to finish decoding. She looks at me with big unblinking eyes. Her face has turned white, and the ballpen trembles on her hand. She is speechless.

"Why, Sis? What does the message say?" I ask. "Come on, read it aloud, will you?"

She reads it: "CCCP Central Committee top secret order to all submarines. Launch nuclear warheads at 1800 hrs. Targets..." and she proceeds to read a list of cities, which include our dear beloved home city.

"We will be bombed in two hours! I must tell everyone!" She rushes out to spread the word. She tells our Mama. Our eldest brother. The entire grocery staff.

I chuckle softly. I think my three-day flu is over. Victimizing Isabel is always fun. She recalls it with special fondness. She's such a sweet sister, don't you think?