The One Dedicated to My Brother

Look at the little kid. 🙂 He used to be cute. 🙂

Well today is my brother’s birthday, and he is officially a teenager. I’ve known him for thirteen years now, and we have some pretty amazing memories.

Alex is crazy. I’ll start by telling you that. He’s awkward, and weird, and random, and sometimes annoying. He also happens to be hilarious. I can tell you that there’s not much that can make me laugh harder than when he puts on his nerd voice and says “Hey, chili cheese.” (He always winks to go with it.)

My brother and I don’t always get along, but there’s that connection that comes with having a brother. It’s not like it’s obvious, or mushy, or full of sunshine, but it’s love. He’s younger than I am, but he’s still there to listen to my rants. He still shows me how to do a back flip into the swimming pool. He’ll give me his opinion on that one book, or one of my stories, or whatever. It’s special and different. We do fight, but it’s almost funny how ridiculous it is.

Thinking of his birthday, I always remember this one day when we were bored and lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I had decided to “decrease the ant population.” In other words, I went outside and bent over squishing every ant I could find with my little index finger. I was only six, and Alex was three. I had killed so many ants, and Alex was behind me doing whatever. And then I looked back at him, and you know what? He was eating every single ant that I killed. I was like “What on earth????” And then I turned back around and went back to killing ants.

That same year we decided to eat sap from a tree, because we thought it would taste like honey. I learned a lesson that day. 😉

Lots of people think that my brother and I don’t like each other or whatever, but to be honest, I don’t know what I would do without him. He’s different, and crazy, and I love that he can do something completely random and it’s not weird to me anymore. I wish that I had appreciated him more in the past years. I guess the moral of my rambling is that you should appreciate whatever you’ve got, even if it’s a daily nuisance. Truth be told, you”ll probably grow to love every moment of it.

I love you, Broski!

Kenny

“There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother… Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.” –Anna Quindlen