Little Brother Tales

Loved in an abusive sort of way

Photo by Vika Glitter: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-boys-sitting-near-each-other-3890213/

A budding (mad) scientist

My brother was three years older than me. He was the oldest; I was second. Our sisters came four and nine years later. John was clearly the brains of the outfit. Not only did he have a head start on the rest of us, but he was also a straight-A student, read every book in the fourth-grade library, and remembered everything he ever read.

In support of his superior intellect, our parents bought him a chemistry set one Christmas. I enjoyed watching him follow the instruction book to produce various results meant to fascinate young minds.

After mastering every trick in the instruction manual, John started to go off script. On one such occasion, as he mixed a little of this with a little of that into a test tube, the contents began to foam and produce smoke. He handed it to me and said, “Quick, throw this in the creek before it blows up!”

Like an idiot, I grabbed the glass tube, ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, then the living room, out onto the porch, down another set of stairs, across the yard, and gave the bomb a mighty heave.

I honestly don’t know if my hand smacked a tree somewhere in my throwing motion or if the thing really did explode before I sent it flying. Either way, I ended up with a swollen, black-and-blue thumb and several sore fingers.

That’s when the cover-up began. We must have been home alone at the time because no one noticed my mad dash through the house or scream of pain at the point of detonation.

There were many reasons to keep the incident between the two of us.

First of all, we were worried John would lose his chemistry set. Second, he was, after all, my big brother. He would have pounded me into the dirt had I squealed. Third, I had an ace to play should I ever need a similar oath of silence.

It was hard to keep my injuries to myself, but somehow, I managed. I think being the middle child helped.

Bubble gum bike

Being second on the family depth chart, I was Mr. Hand-me-downs. That made for some awkward wardrobe combinations since John was heavyset while I was on the slim side.

One item he hadn’t handed off yet was his beautiful red Schwinn bicycle. We lived out in the country without any paved streets on which to ride. At the end of our driveway was a major highway. Not recommended for novice cyclists.

We rode the bike around our treed lot. That wore paths into the soil where grass once grew. It wasn’t until after we were all grown and gone that Dad recovered his green lawn.

Something else you should know about John is that even as a child, he took really good care of his stuff. When he passed away at the age of 62, he still had his Buddy L camper truck with the camper fully intact. He got that when he was 8 or 9 years old. The horse trailer and truck I got at the same time didn’t last two years.

We each got Daisy BB pistols; same guns. I still have mine. It’s no longer functional and looks like it was ridden hard and put up wet. John’s is still new in the box.

Back to the bike. I didn’t have one. Whenever John was busy elsewhere, I’d hop on his bicycle and do laps around the yard. Pretending to be a cowboy off on an adventure, I’d circle my make-believe prairie for hours at a time. When I was done, I was careful to put the bike back in the same spot that I’d found it.

I also had a fondness for chewing very large wads of bubble gum. While working on just such a mouthful as I rode the range one day, I blew a massive bubble. A bug came along and pierced it. Grossed out and not wanting to ingest the insect, I spat my gum out. It landed on John’s pristine chrome handlebars.

Frantically, I tried to extricate the sticky gum from the bike only to make matters worse. There was gum from one handgrip to the other. Rubbing dirt onto the mess helped to neutralize the stickiness, but it did nothing for the appearance.

After exhausting all my efforts to restore the shine, I finally gave up and put it back where John had parked it. It wasn’t hard to hear exactly when he discovered what happened. Lions roaring in on the Serengeti Plain had nothing on him.

None of my lies or excuses assuaged his anger. When you are one of only two kids in the neighborhood with access to a bike, it’s hard to blame someone else. I paid for my sins by receiving several fistfuls of wrath from his hands. The good news is that the bike was pretty much mine after that.

It’s rather amazing any of us survives childhood, especially if we have siblings. No one loves and hates you more, which is the exact right formula for becoming lifelong friends.