My brother hits people.
I haven’t hit someone in years. I can’t remember who the last person was.
Oh, wait. I can.
But, it was a while ago.
My brother grew up to be much bigger than me. Imagine if you would a taller more muscular version of myself. And then imagine that I look more like my father than my mother.
What I mean to say, in a convoluted way is that he looks nothing like me.
I take after my mom (my child-bearing hips and bosom) and my brother takes after my father with his blue eyes, legal pad, and wind suit.
My grandmother (bless her poundcake) calls her sisters “sister”. As in, “I spoke to sister today”, which is funny because she has like 12 sisters, and many of them all look the same.
So, brother has led a bit more of a colorful life than me. I think most younger siblings do – us older ones pave the way in moderately bad behavior and rule breaking.
I ‘mouthed’ off to my parents a few times, and one semester in high school continually skipped classes until the school got fed up and called my parents. “68 classes?!!” I got kind of grounded, but they lost some of their steam when I pointed out that I was doing better academically this semester than I had ever done in my life.
Little brother comes along, and he is sneaking out, wrecking cars, and using the F-word freely in front of the parents. Discipline went straight into the can with him. I had to be home at 11:30 during high school, but with my brother they just asked that he come home before sunrise.
In a way, I am jealous. He had more drama and excitement in his life. He had more fights with my parents that I think has brought them closer together. I mean, my life isn’t that exciting, and really never has been – it’s just been a series of interesting apartments, jobs, and marrying a haute-mamma. Brother’s life has been late night calls from the police.
My brother hits people.
He hits people. That was the point. You are thinking, “WTF?!”
The neat thing (and robot journal worthy thing) is that he is very principled about it. He doesn’t go to bars and beat up on people. Actually, the people he hits usually start something with him.
(side note: from talking with other big/strong guys, I get the feeling that people are always trying to pick fights with them. And the people are usually smaller. WTF. If you want to pick a fight and win, come find me, not some big ass guy.)
Guys have messed with him in bars. In parking lots. Harassing his girlfriend. Harassing his friends.
He’ll be walking down the street with a friend who has long hair, and some idiots will be like, “hey fag”.
He has all these stories. People are always trying to step to his eggs.
The funny thing is that when it comes to blows, he always only throws one punch and that’s it. He can usually knock people down with just one punch.
It’s kind of cool that he has this magic one punch, but I am also a bit worried that he has become lazy and relies on it too much. What if he hits some guy who doesn’t fall after one punch? Does he have any idea what to do next? Will that be his ultimate demise?
Now, after all this talk of violence, it’s also rather ironic that he is the most polite and sweet person I know. Ask anyone who knows him – he is overly nice. Ask my grandmother – he’s always charming her.
He has this dog that he just babies. He listens to Belle&Sebastin constantly (that should be enough right there). He respects his elders. Says “yes sir” and “yes ma’am”.
His hitting has been cut down drastically though in the last few years. Got a girlfriend, and then they moved into together, and finally got married. She has a dog, too, so they have a little family.
He is working all the time now and trying to make it in the big city.
He doesn’t get into many fights anymore, which is a shame because I was never there to witness one (except our pre-pubescent fights where I would beat the crap out of him).
Oh, final point: don’t fight. Fighting makes baby jeebus cry.
