Little brothers can be a HUGE pain. Especially when said "little" brothers are over 6 feet in height, 7 years younger, but are somehow experts at bringing reality crashing down all around your poor unsuspecting head.
First, you begin to understand that in trying to keep surroundings neat, clean and habitable for humans, you are, in fact, fighting a losing battle. The highest record so far is about 30 seconds. 30 seconds that a a floor was clean and unoccupied until a pair of stinky socks landed there.
Survival skills. You can run, duck, zig zag around most types of surfaces, reflexes are much quicker than those whose lives are devoid of younger brothers. And all that escaping from flying objects (sometimes flying object is the brother itself) makes you so agile, don't be surprised if the armed forces come recruiting.
And, I will believe in miracles the day my brother and I like the same song.
Also, you might sit through an explosion, and not blink an eye, because you will assume that your brother is just playing his music somewhere close by.
Younger brothers make you stronger. Really. It starts with fights for comic books, novels, remote, computer, bandwidth, and then moves on to Apple-is-stupid-No-it-isn't. And since you learn never to take it lying down from a little twerp, you will never, ever, take it lying down from anybody in the world! And also, those fights over the remote might just give you arm-strength.
Then there are those moments. When said little twerp tells you that his music is "against the system", doesn't stop there, and goes on to give you a lecture about exactly what he thinks is wrong with the "system". You don't know whether you should feel secretly happy that your younger brother, by some strange mysterious unexplainable accident, has the exact same views as you. Or if you just smack him on the head and say "stop that damned loud music and get outta here".
But nothing, nothing, brings reality crashing on your head, like when in that routine fight for the computer, you pass a routine comment about "....blah blah it's just Facebook!". And without even looking up, in a very matter of fact way, you are told that "maybe you don't get the whole Facebook concept because you are too old for it."
The next step is obviously a fight that is the stuff of nightmares, but it is also the beginning of a very depressing thought process about growing up and all the related nonsense that will haunt you for a long, long, time. Until of course, you decide to write about it because there really is nothing else to write about.
First, you begin to understand that in trying to keep surroundings neat, clean and habitable for humans, you are, in fact, fighting a losing battle. The highest record so far is about 30 seconds. 30 seconds that a a floor was clean and unoccupied until a pair of stinky socks landed there.
Survival skills. You can run, duck, zig zag around most types of surfaces, reflexes are much quicker than those whose lives are devoid of younger brothers. And all that escaping from flying objects (sometimes flying object is the brother itself) makes you so agile, don't be surprised if the armed forces come recruiting.
And, I will believe in miracles the day my brother and I like the same song.
Also, you might sit through an explosion, and not blink an eye, because you will assume that your brother is just playing his music somewhere close by.
Younger brothers make you stronger. Really. It starts with fights for comic books, novels, remote, computer, bandwidth, and then moves on to Apple-is-stupid-No-it-isn't. And since you learn never to take it lying down from a little twerp, you will never, ever, take it lying down from anybody in the world! And also, those fights over the remote might just give you arm-strength.
Then there are those moments. When said little twerp tells you that his music is "against the system", doesn't stop there, and goes on to give you a lecture about exactly what he thinks is wrong with the "system". You don't know whether you should feel secretly happy that your younger brother, by some strange mysterious unexplainable accident, has the exact same views as you. Or if you just smack him on the head and say "stop that damned loud music and get outta here".
But nothing, nothing, brings reality crashing on your head, like when in that routine fight for the computer, you pass a routine comment about "....blah blah it's just Facebook!". And without even looking up, in a very matter of fact way, you are told that "maybe you don't get the whole Facebook concept because you are too old for it."
The next step is obviously a fight that is the stuff of nightmares, but it is also the beginning of a very depressing thought process about growing up and all the related nonsense that will haunt you for a long, long, time. Until of course, you decide to write about it because there really is nothing else to write about.
