How To Psycho Your Baby Sister

This excerpt is from Shawn Achor's The Happiness Advantage. I was supposed put up the principles from this book. And I will. Later. For now, I'm putting up my favourite story from there. It has unicorns in it. Hint, hint, if you want to give me a birthday present, a Christmas present or any sort of present at all...something unicorn-related would go down real well.

Real well!



I fell for psychology the day my sister fell of the bed.

Once when I was seven years old, my sister Amy and I were playing on the top of our bunk beds. At the time, Amy was two years younger (incidentally, she still is), and at that time that meant she had to do whatever I wanted to do. I wanted to play war (I'm from Texas), so I lined up my G.I. Joes and soldiers on my side of the top bunk against all her My Little Ponies and unicorns on the other side. I felt confident about the outcome; you don't have to know a lot about military history to know that very rarely have unicorns ever defeated soldiers on the battlefield.

However, there are differing accounts of what happened a the climax of the battle. I'm the one telling this story, so I will tell the true version. My sister got a little too excited and, without any help from me, fell off of the top bunk. I heard a crash on the floor and I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sibling.

Amy had landed on the floor on her hands and knees, on all fours. Now, I was nervous. First, because my sister was and is my best friend. More important, though, I had been charged by my parents with ensuring that my sister and I play as quietly and safely as possible, as they were settling down for a long winter's nap. I looked at my sister's face and noticed that a wail of pain and suffering was about to erupt from her mouth, threatening to wake my parents from their rest. Crisis is the mother of all invention, so I did the only thing my frantic little seven-year-old brain could think to do. I said, "Amy, wait! Wait. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours like that. You...you're a unicorn!"

Now this was absolutely cheating, for I knew that there was nothing in the world my sister wanted more than for the world to realize that she was not Amy the five-year-old, but Amy the special unicorn. The wail froze in my sister's throat, as confusion took over her face. You could see the conflict in her eyes as her brain tried to decide whether to focus on the physical pain she was feeling or her excitement about her newfound identity as a unicorn. The latter won out. Instead of crying, waking my parents, and all the negative consequences that would have ensued, a smile spread across her face, and she proudly bound back up to the top of the bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn.