She was in charge of watching my younger sister Gina and me, and things weren't going as planned. While she was making dinner, we had a list of chores to do.

But while she was tossing salad and broiling pork chops, Gina and I were horsing around in the living room. When Dawn came in to yell at us for the 10th time, she stood there, hand on hip, threatening to tell our mom, Carmella, who would in turn beat the tar out of us with her shoe, a spatula or rolled-up Daily News.

It was the threat of tattling that made me run full force at my older sister and clothesline her, a move I copied off TV thanks to a new wrestler called Hulk Hogan.

As my outstretched arm met her throat, the force threw her into my dad's Lay-Z Boy recliner, which flipped over. Her Dr. Scholl's wooden clogs flew off her feet and hit the ceiling fan.

Dawn was trapped, in recliner position, under the chair. She wasn't moving, and all was quiet in the living room. It was almost like when that Kansas farmhouse fell out of the sky and smushed a certain green-skinned sister.

I thought I'd broken her neck, or worse, decapitated her with my wrestling move. I ordered Gina to peek into the kitchen and look for her head under the table.

I didn't kill my sister that day. Years later, Gina got it worse when we were fighting in the kitchen. During a shoving match, I pushed her over an open dishwasher door. Not only did her weight break the door off its hinges, but it also pried up the kitchen countertop, spilling a hot crock pot of meatballs and sausage in gravy over her head.

Gina didn't die either, but Bruno the Dalmatian, hitting the eternal doggie-dinner jackpot that night, had gas that would make Sunoco envious for the next few days.

Mama Carm threw the first thing she could grab at us, a two-liter bottle of Pepsi, for losing a whole pot of meatballs the size of softballs, which she'd mixed with her hands without removing her wedding ring.

My sisters never got even with me, and for the rest of my life I was always waiting for the payback. Now that we're grown, and hair-pulling and girl-slapping fights are just precious memories, I've come to love my sisters immensely - but still sleep with one eye open during family vacations.

Recently, I had some major surgery that left me held together from breastbone to groin with about 125 staples. The first two weeks of recovery, I had to be treated like an infant, and it was up to sister Dawn to wake me every morning and give me a bath.

So, with 125 staples down my front, two drains drilled into my bikini line and me, high on Percocets, Dawn showered me twice a day. It was a very loving gesture in sisterly history.

She had my favorite shampoo and conditioner as well as my favorite body wash. She had the bathing of the invalid down to a science. Jesus himself would've hired her as a foot-washer.

Having me face the wall, she washed my shoulders, back, legs, feet, and then my backside. Turning me around, she washed my face and chest, softly scrubbing around my 16-inch incision, waist, legs, arms and hands.

This routine went on for two weeks, religiously. Even though I was in a pain-killer-induced blur, I timed her, and played a game with myself to see how much faster she could wash me than the day before.

It wasn't until my last bath-assistance day, the day my staples and drains were being removed, that I caught on that, almost 20 years after the fact, my sister Dawn was finally having her revenge.

No, she didn't snap pictures of me in my birthday suit to publish on the Internet. She just simply bathed me with this routine: washing my shoulders, back, legs, feet, backside, FACE, chest, waist, kneecaps, arms and hands.

Did you catch that washing order, dear reader? For 14 consecutive days, I got her two decades of simmering payback right in the kisser - right after getting my butt cleaned with the same washcloth.

Which gets me to thinking about the two most-evil famous sisters, the Wicked Witches of the East and West. What I'm wondering now is: When the WWW shrieked the four-word question that's gone down in movie history - "Who killed my sister?" - was she really upset, looking for revenge, or did she just want to know who the culprit was so she could send a fruit basket or massage gift certificate?

This is cache, read story here