My Brother

Okay t, I looked through my comments, and I haven't heard from you since January 5th. Get on it! Is she on vacation or what? COME BACK TO ME, T!

On a lighter note, I thought I'd tell you a little story. I used to have this crush on one of my brother's friends. His name is Andy (no relation to my future son, who will be named Andy - err, I mean Duane). Let's see, my brother was 6 years older than me.....so I would have been 12 years old or so? We used to hang up a wire in the backyard between 2 trees and tie water balloons onto it, then use them as target practice and shoot 'em. Anyway, all of us got into a water fight and I soaked Andy. So he picks up a pitcher of water and starts chasing me with it. Well, I run into the backyard under the wire and, yup, you guessed it. He followed and had no idea the wire was there (cause we have great aim and were no more balloons hanging from it). He probably still has a scar on his nose from it - it may have gotten him on the side of his eye, too. Poor guy.

How about I tell you about my oldest sibling? My brother used to practice his boyscout knots on us. He would tie one end on a door knob, then put it over the top of the door, and hang us by our feet on the other side of the door. He always defends himself and says he never left us up there for very long (20 minutes at the most, he claims) and always put a chair by our heads so ALL the blood never had a chance to rush there all at once. Eh, I'm sure we deserved it.

I thought he was so cool growing up - he had this motorcycle for a while (well, I think it was his anyway). I wanted a ride on it so bad....and he said the only way I could get a ride was if I drank this bottle of breath freshener. I don't know if you people have ever tried the stuff, but one drop on the tongue and a little burn later, and you have some great breath for a while. And to his defense, the bottle wasn't big.....just enough to last you a couple months or so. Yeah, I drank it for a motorcycle ride.....after I recovered, of course. Man, that burned!

My brother was always pretty good to us, though. The only time I ever saw him really mad was when I was trying to get downstairs (all of our rooms were upstairs). I was following him down and he was taking his precious time because he knew I was in a hurry. And being 6 years older than me and male, obviously stronger than I was. Well, I knew about next to nothing about the male anatomy, but I had heard some people at school talking about kicking a guy in the ....well, you know. I didn't know what happened if you did that, but boy I found out. I was trying to push my way through, and he turned around so I had a pretty clean shot. Oh was he ever mad. Needless to say, I never did that again! Is it too late to say sorry for that?

We weren't ever allowed in his bedroom, and had this trick about cracking the door the perfect amount every time so he would know if we had been in there or not. We could never duplicate the length - I still don't know how he ever got it to stay that way. Anyway, my sister had started a fight with my parents downstairs and I started crying and ran upstairs screaming - I didn't do well with fighting because I didn't see it very much growing up. And I heard the slightest knock at my door, so I opened it. And there stood my brother holding out his arms to give me a hug. He must have known how scared I was because this was just not his personality. He was too relaxed and cool to be scared or frazzled. Then he invited me into his room and let me play his guitar and mess with his stereo (which was normally forbidden). I felt pretty special.

Before he turned 30 this year, he had a heat stroke, and later found out he had a heart attack. Gave us quite a scare. Hopefully the smoking comes to a permanent end. So this blog is for my brother. Sorry for taking you for granted those many years and never really got to know you all that well, even though we're only a few miles apart now. I always admired your "relax" (his senior saying in the yearbook) attitude and your kindness to everyone you came into contact with. I always saw you as a role model, whether I ever let you in on that or not. Thanks for being the best big brother! I love you.