When I was 13 and my sister Shelly was 11, I nearly drowned on a family vacation. My cousin had been jumping off of the side of my raft until it turned over. My legs were tangled in the rubbery plastic and I couldn’t free them. Then, from behind me, I felt small hands clearing my feet from the raft. I breached the surface of the water to see Shelly’s face peeking out from above her raft.

“I could swim to you really fast ‘cause I was on this thing,” she grinned.

In some way or another, Shelly has always looked out for me.

My sister Shelly, whose full name is Rachelle, fell in love before I did. She also moved away from home before I did and got her first kiss long before I did. Shelly is the reasonable, practical sister — she is my voice of sanity when my own goes missing. I go to her as any girl would her older sister — but Shelly is younger than I am.

She doesn’t party as hard as I do and she scolds me when I drink too much coffee. She’s the one who gives me relationship advice. We speak on a daily basis and hang out several times a week.

Often, people think we’re twins. Acquaintances moan to me, “Man, I saw this girl on campus the other day and she looked just like you, so I said ‘hi,’ but she didn’t say anything back…” “Must’ve been my sister,” I reply with a smile. People usually have trouble guessing who is older based on our looks.

Shelly came into the world when I was a year-and-a-half old. As a result of some technical difficulties pronouncing “Rachelle,” I began calling her Duh-Bow. This eventually morphed into a family nickname that has followed her for all of her twenty years: Bobo. I still occasionally have to explain to new friends and acquaintances why I am calling out, “Hey, Bo!” and why Shelly actually responds to a name usually given to Teddy bears and dogs.

As children, we played constantly and fought rarely. Barring one incident in which I vividly remember the fear in her big brown eyes as I chased her around the yard with a loaded water gun, we just got along, plain and simple. We built forts out of comforters strewn over metal swing set poles and mourned the loss of her first pet goldfish by burying him in a black velvet jewelry box a few inches into the sun-dried dirt beside our house.

As the average lifespan increases in America, sibling relationships often last longer than those we have with dear old mom and dad. Indeed, when my parents are gone, I know that I will rely on Shelly even more than I do now.

I was both proud and crestfallen when Shelly decided to go away to school. My parents and I drove her down to Springfield, Mo., and my dad’s sunglasses hid his tears as we pulled away from Drury University. I didn’t cry that day, but soon after I started to feel the loss the distance was creating.

As she went through sorority rush and I began my junior year, we spoke infrequently. She would mention a name, and I had to be reminded who she was talking about. I had never been unfamiliar with Shelly’s friends and had previously always known her teachers and the town she lived in.

Each of our conversations had to start with the required updates on the past week’s events before we could get into the real, mile-a-minute, excited exchanges we were used to sharing. She was four hours away, but it made a world of difference.

I called her one time that fall, before she was home, from a concert and let her listen to a song over the phone. Coldplay’s “Fix You” had been our song of the summer right before she left for school; we listened to it constantly. She later told me that as the drums kicked in and the soaring harmonies floated over Chris Martin’s pure voice, she simply sat on the sidewalk outside of her dorm and sobbed. She didn’t admit this to me until months later.

That first semester was hard on her too, though she never once cried to me about it. Drury was too small and she wasn’t getting the education she had expected, so, to my utter delight, she decided to transfer to KU at semester. Once she was home, we shifted right back into gear. Coming to KU in the middle of her freshman year wasn’t easy on Shelly, but we were back together again and needed no time to adjust.

Shelly often says to me that I’m the fun in her life, and she knows that she is the sanity in mine. As I have spun in and out of the arms of more guys than I would like to admit over the past five years, Shelly has been in two relationships. She has been with her current boyfriend for almost three years; they (and I) are quite certain that they will marry one another. Shelly has a more mature perspective on a genuine, supportive relationship than I do. The only logical option I have is to beg for her sage counsel.

She offered a portion of her wisdom up this past spring. I had a crush on someone who regularly came into the coffee shop where I work, and one hot May afternoon, Shelly and I saw him there. I did my best to emanate wit and charm as he waited in line. After we had flirted and he had walked away, iced coffee in hand, Shelly and I checked him out from behind.

“Is it OK that I think he’s really cute,” I asked her.

She pushed her dark sunglasses up into her brown hair, squinted her eyes, puckered her mouth a bit in concentration, and reached a verdict.

“He is cute,” she replied. “You should date him.”

Nine months later, I still am. The greatest thing about taking Shelly’s advice is that usually it works out for the best.