Flashback Friday # 23

The biggest animal in our house

Over the last few weeks, I have bored my readers (both of them) to tears with stories about the pets that I had as a child. This post is the last animal post for a while. It deals with the largest animal that lived in our house: my older brother.

As described in Flashback Friday #1, I will refer to my brother as Sir Gattabout. He served for many years as a paratrooper in the US Army both domestically and abroad, and now drives semi-trucks for a living (hence the name). He is four years older than me and at the time, much stronger. His main objective in life was to torment me, and he did a good job at that.

My faithful readers know of how he scared me (or was that scarred me) and how he blackmailed me. Here are some of the other things he did to me to make my life rough.

He would make up things about foods, and I being so gullible, would believe them. I wouldn't eat smoked sausage for years because he told me that smoked sausages only come from male cattle (if you get my drift). I also wouldn't eat apple butter for a very long time because he told me it got its brown color from the cooks spitting their chewing tobacco in it.

While waiting for the school bus one day, he was riding his bike up & down the driveway popping wheelies. He yelled out that he was going to pop a wheelie on me, so I took off. As he was chasing me with his bike, I stumbled and fell. He ran over top of me, and I went to school with tire tracks across my back.

One time he knocked me on my back on the living room floor. On my back, with my knees bent, he stepped on the top of my feet and did a cross country skiing motion. OWWW! I always tried to land someplace other than my back after that.

The problem of landing someplace other than your back is sometime that leaves you on your belly. Wedgies were common (we called them "snuggies"), but this would lead to a fate worse than wedgies. He would grab the waistband of my underwear, give a tug, them grab one of my legs, bend it back and slip the waistband over my toes. It's like turning a turtle upside down. It's even worse if you are fat (which I was). I like to never reached back far enough to slip my toes out and get free. This happened at least once a week.

While playing cowboys & indians one day, he caught me and tied me up to a fence post. He then said since all the cowboys were captured (me) he was going to raid the cowboy settlement. He then went inside for a snack. I yelled and yelled for him to come out and untie me, and after a couple hours he did. It was right before mom & dad were due home, and he threatened to beat me up if I told.

I never told, because he always carried out his threats. Sometimes he beat me up even if he didn't threaten first. I carried at least one bruise every day for several years due to him. He also liked to bite and flick my ears. I will say this much for him, I was HIS personal punching bag. One time one of his classmates was picking on me during recess,and my brother commenced to put a whacking on that boy. He could beat me up, but nobody else was allowed to.

We always had games of combat, and he always won. We would get at opposite ends of the couch and shoot at each other with rubber tipped dart guns. One day he got the bright idea of taking the rubber tips off of his darts. Those little buggers hurt. We also would throw little apples at each other from our gnarly old apple tree. That ended when he started putting nails in his apples. Don't even get me started about the shotgun.

One day when I got home from school I found the front door locked. I then went to the back door. Thump! Ow! Thump! Ow! He had locked all the doors and windows and was sitting on the low roof in back with a bucket of green walnuts which he was pelting me with. I couldn't throw them back at him because he was sitting with his back to his bedroom window, and if I missed him, I would break the window. He let me in shortly before mom & dad got home with threats not to tell or else. I got in trouble because my chores weren't done.

After he enrolled in the military when I was 14, I grew bigger and stronger. Once while visiting him and his wife at Ft. Bragg NC, He thought we were kids again and grabbed me by the shoulders to throw me down. When I didn't budge, his eyes got big, and we commence to wrestle right there in the dining room. We called it a draw when mom started whacking us with the fly swatter and telling us to straighten up. We were both thoroughly winded, and I felt like I could puke, but he hadn't beaten me, and it felt good. he looked at me differently after that.

When I gave my life to God, I forgave him for the way he had treated me as a kid. I don't think he believed me. Several years ago he was in a motorcycle accident, and lost the lower part of his left leg. When he was released from the hospital, I was there to help get him in his house (he had steps to get his wheelchair up). We rigged a crude ramp and I was going to pull him up. Once we got to the top I looked at my brother and he was white as a sheet. I asked him if he was OK. "I honestly thought that you were going to dump me out as payback for all the mean things I did to you" he replied. I assured him that the thought hadn't even crosses my mind.

He lives about six blocks away, but we still don't see a lot of each other due to different work schedules and interest. I work days, he works nights. He loves to fish and boat, I hate fishing and get motion sick easily. We get together at major holiday and big games like the OSU-Michigan game. Even though were not as close as I would like to be, I credit him for toughening up this momma's boy. It's kind of like the song "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash.

My Tiny Kingdom started a Flashback Friday carnival three weeks ago. Anytime my subject matches her theme, I will link over to it. Since todays is "Free for all", I assume it can cover anything, or is about fighting, which both apply.