The S word: Submission.... of a sibling sort

The other day, friends and I were sitting at good ol' Maccy D's, when I excitedly shared my goals for the year: 1) to go to a Kurt Darren concert, and 2) to attend a weekend trance party.

"No ways are you going to a weekend trance party", said the Brother firmly, quelling any possible objections from me with a glance. "You are not going, and that's that."

Seeing as I'm not 5 anymore, I don't take too kindly to being told what to do. My hackles especially rise when I'm being told exactly what it is I need to do, instead of having it sugarcoated in friendly suggestions.

So what did I do? Throw my ice-cream in his face (impossible, as I wasn't eating any ice-cream)? Throw a wobbly right there and then, and ask him how dare he treat me like a baby? None of the above, actually.

The Brother gets away with what many of my friends (male or female) don't get away with: telling me what to do. And when he speaks, I do what I don't often do with other people's advice: I take it. My friends have often been surprised at the way the Sister and I 'obey' my brother's orders, but it's really simple, actually:

My brother has proven over again and again, to me and the Younger Sister, that when he tells us to do something (or rather, in my case, not to do something) that he isn't doing it just because he's a spoilsort- it's because he thought through the implications of our decisions, and consequences thereof more thoroughly than we have. Of all the people who come in and out of our lives, it is him who has consistently shown that he wants only the best for us, and that is why we listen. [Most of the time.]

Understanding this has really made me reconsider my inner-feminist's throw-up reaction to the word 'submission' in the context of marriage. After all, don't we submit to other authorities in other fields of life every day: our business leaders/ study leaders/ bosses?

[insert your own cool closing remark here.]