I have mentioned here before that I have a younger brother. He has seemed to have been around for just about as far back as I can remember. There is a brief period of time I can actually remember it was just my Sister and I, but then he starts coming into the picture all of the sudden and has been around ever since.
Now after I was born, or so I have been told, the Doctors told my Mom it was pretty near impossible for her to have any more children since I was a pretty big baby (NO jokes in the comment section ok!?) I had done some damage to her baby carriage department. So in 1955 when things did just not seem right to her, the Doctors thought it might be possible that she had a tumor. Well folks, today that tumor turns 52, and I am proud to call him my little brother.
Now with all the love we have for each other now, I hate to tell you it was not always so. Yea we grew up together in a very loving family and when we were little we played with each other and when you look at all the pictures of us when we were little, you see two smiling perfect little boys who look like little angels...wrong!! You see my brother Steve and I were really different in alot of ways. While I was pretty quiet and easy going, Steve had a temper. Yes! Can you believe
behind that sweet smile of that child he had a very bad temper. Now I am not trying to tell you here I was a perfect child, no, I did have my faults (if you can believer it), but I can say I did not have a temper. When we were playing cowboys and Steve jumped out from behind the tree in the front yard and shot you, you better just say you were dead. If you argued with him that
he had not shot you, you better be prepared for the consequences, such as him walking up to you and slamming you in the face with the butt of his toy metal pistol and tell you,"OK, now you are dead". Don't believe me, let me show you the scar I still have in my chin to this day. When Steve said you were shot, just be shot, ok?
There were several little incidents that I remember growing up with my little brother. As we grew older I grew taller but Steve was always shorter than I was. He was a slow grower my Mom always said. The summer I graduated High School, I went away for the summer to a Business School. When I came home, at the airport, I really did not recongnize him right at first because he had really grown during the summer and he was almost as tall as I was! The thing I did recognize though was he was wearing my shirt!!
Since he started High School the year I graduate, I was off working and going to School and stuff and for a time we were not as close as we had been. As we grew older it was very easy to see
we were totally different in more ways than one. But we still loved each other the same.
I ended up moving away and he has continued to live in the very same area we were born and grew up in. We would call each other from time to time but we mainly kept up with each other through Mom. When I would come back to visit we would always get together and hang out and stuff. But it was when we were both in our 40's that we started once again getting that bond back that we had as kids. But I could not call him my little brother any more, he is as big as I am! For the past several years, we talk to each other at least once or twice a week and trust me they are not short phone calls. Each time we talk it is just like a visit from home, as he says.
He has a wicked sense of humor, worse than me, and can remember a funny joke forever.
We usually spend most of our calls laughing. I have honestly had to pull my car over on the side of the road a few times when we have been talking and he is telling me a joke. It is hard to drive
when you are laughing so hard you are crying.
I have really proud of my brother. He has a great wife, Nancy, and great little boy named Morgan who is 3 if my memory is right. He also has 3 grown children, Sarah, John and Kathryn and several grandchildren, who I honestly can not remember their names but I know who they are when I am around them!!.
So today, Happy Birthday, Stevie. It has been a great journey together these past 52 years,
and I am looking forward to being your big brother for many, many more years. And as you tell me everytime we talk, "Take good care of you, you are the only one of you I've got!"
I Love You.....Happy Birthday.
p.s. And as for that temper of his, well its still there, it has just mellowed with age!!!
