In the beginning…..

In the beginning things were great. There was me, my mom and my dad. Things were good UNTIL my aunt advised my mother that she needed to have another baby. If she didn’t have another baby, then I would be spoiled. (I still fail to see how this would have been a bad thing.)

Apparently my mother agreed because before I was 2, I had a little brother.

Stories were told of how I dropped a wooden play phone on his head as a baby. (THIS is an important detail. It becomes his reason for all of the stupid stuff that he does.)

I am not sure if I didn’t like him, or just jealous of the attention that he got because he was, quite honestly, the cuter of the two of us.

From the very beginning he was more than a handful. Always getting himself into trouble.  And I should tell you that the punishments were not light. Not in the least.

So, WHY would he continue down this path of getting himself into trouble? Well, there’s always that part of me that says it’s because that’s how he got attention. Psychology says that there is positive attention and negative attention, but really it all boils down to ATTENTION. It doesn’t matter what KIND of attention it is, just as long as there is attention.  So, since they chose to give him any attention for the trouble he was making, he would just keep right on doing it.

So, you might be asking yourself –“ What did YOU do for attention? Weren’t you jealous of the attention that he got all of the time?”  Well, I’ll answer the second question first. The simple answer is yes. OF COURSE I was jealous of the attention, but I DEFINITELY was NOT jealous of the punishment. – Now, back to the first question. What I did for attention was nothing really. I eventually would go to school first and become an exceptional student. THAT is how I got my attention. Granted, the attention was short-lived and there was little gotten from it, but my brother did see that I got praise for it.  Because once he started in school, he chose an alternative path. I don’t know if consciously or subconsciously he thought that he couldn’t compete with me in school – OR maybe he just didn’t want to put forth that kind of effort  (But DO know this – my brother is not stupid. Far from it.) , but his path was to be very different.

For my first posting, I will tell you about one of the first things that I can remember my brother doing that would get him into HUGE trouble……

It’s important to note that this house was on a small hill. Our driveway was fairly steep and made of gravel.  On the other side of the road was our mailbox and then a very, very steep drop off.

My mom had taken us to the community pool one summer day.  For whatever reason, we didn’t have the car that day, we had my father’s Ford truck.

It was raining when we returned and my mom had parked the truck and gotten out to open the garage door.

It was at this point, my brother who was sitting in the middle, turned to me and smiled this horrible shit grin. He then reached over and put the truck into neutral. 

This is where I remember rolling down the driveway. After that I don’t remember much.  My mother recalls running down the driveway after us in her swimsuit and flip flops in the rain.

Our mailbox stopped us from going over the drop off on the other side of the road. Lucky for us, my father had used cement when he put the mailbox up.

The bad news was that we were still in the road. We lived in the country and people would haul ASS down the road at all times of day. It was lucky for us that some people who lived nearby were coming down the road and stopped to help. 

While we were alive, my brother was in some SERIOUS trouble. I don’t know what happened exactly, but I would guess that there was spanking involved.

This is one of many stories. Stories that continue to create themselves, even though my brother is in his thirties.

And even though he pulls all of this stupid crap, they still like him better. Seriously.

But I’ll get more into that later…..