My Brothers

Most people who have brothers and sisters know all about sibling rivalry. In that respect I am no different. I have four brothers, and we are all completely different from each other with exceptions.

I am the middle child of a family of five boys and no girls. I am nine years older than my youngest brother and nine years younger than my oldest brother, I was the third of 5 boys, and I am totally different from the rest of them.

First of all, my brothers are all athletic. I could have been were it not for my asthma (which no one else in my family has). The oldest of us, Zac, Played football in high school, my second oldest brother, Chris, played basketball. My little brother is almost identical to me physically but in no other way. Sean plays every sport – better than most I might add. Patrick is too young to tell at this time, but I suspect he will also be playing a lot of basketball in the future. The fact that all of my brothers played sports and I did not brought up a reason for us to antagonize each other. Minor disputes came up between all of us but the major war of words was between Sean and me. To him I was emo, fat, psycho, freak, etc. To me, he was stupid, jock, short, clone. This is only one of the few ways we fought. At one point we had become so bitter that we began to just resort to violence. Among punches and kicks, we have also fought with whatever we could pick up and throw. I’ve hit him with a golf club. He’s thrown a tv at me. The worst thing that has happened would be when he threw a dart into my eye. My vision is permanently worse in one eye – which is never good when combined with my already near blindness.

That’s enough of the violent talk. Now times have changed for us. I live on campus at university of Memphis. Chris lives with his fiancée. Sean and Patrick live with m parents, and Zac lives with his wife in Ripley. We don’t fight anymore. I miss my brothers all of the time because it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve realized that without the fights we had before we would have never turned out to be the people we are now.