Flat+world+tale

My brother was my hero. I trailed him everywhere. Even when he had chicken pox I followed him around the house and got them myself. Imagine a train, an engine plus the caboose, that was us. One Halloween, I insisted on being Winnie the Pooh just like him. I shadowed him yelling "POOH, POOH, POOH" so loud my mom rushed me to the bathroom.

I always tried to be nice to my brother. The only problem was that he was older and ahead of me in life. By the time he played baseball on a team, I was hitting waffle balls two feet with my dad. I did nice things for him even when I didn't need to. I remember we shared a lot of our toys. I was playing with one of our action figures. My brother wanted to play with it so I gave it to him, even though I still wanted to play. Later I asked him if I could play with it and he said no. My relationship with him was a one-way street. I give it to him and it stayed there.

Before I went to school I had five friends. Josh, Justin, Grant, Max, and my brother. Andrew being older went to school two years before me. He had his own friends and he was also friends with everyone I knew. It was hard for me, because when you are little and you don't go to school, and you're not very social, and you don't play any sports it is hard to make friends.

Josh, Justin, and Grant all went to the same church as my brother and me. I was the youngest one, so while they went to the "big boy" Sunday school, I was stuck in the little one. Their class was in the basement and had a ping-pong table and couches. I had to go to the one with the fake kitchen, and dolls. I was one of the oldest ones there, and wanted to be in the other one with everyone else I knew. If you ever remember being a kid, you know that you have this notion that everything should be fair in the world. I believed it was unfair that I was alone in that Sunday School class, making my feeling of exclusion feel all the worse. I guess I had a lot of jealousy towards my brother and that is one of the reasons we grew apart.

Honestly, I guess I can't really say we grew apart, due to the fact we were never really friends. Looking back on everything I realize that my brother always took advantage of me, I looked up to him, but he was never even nice to me. It started at a very young age actually. My brother said his first sentence the day I came home from the hospital. When my dad told me that story, I never forgot it. "Take the baby back." That was it. The first day I got home he already wanted me gone. That feeling was one he continued to exhibit. I watched a home video of me playing with my brother in our backyard. We had these two Playskool red and yellow cars that you could ride with swivel wheels and a hole in the bottom, where your feet could move like the Flintstones. While I was being pushed I was holding a bat in my hand. My brother came right up to me, took the bat and threw it away. Then he ran. He was never nice to me but I hadn't noticed until now looking back on it.

Well, every Sunday after church I would run around trying to find my brother and my three other friends. It was a hard thing to do. The church had a playground, a sanctuary, the basement I mentioned earlier, a room where my Sunday school took place, and a room where the nursery was. When I found them, normally outside or in the basement, we would play hide and seek, and of course I was always the seeker. The only places they could go would be the playground, the sanctuary and outside. The playground was a pretty good one. It didn't have sand on the ground, but instead had woodchips. There was also this fake train in which you could play in. It was a pretty big playground, with three slides of varying sizes, a sandbox, and a rope ladder to climb on, so it was hard to find them there. The sanctuary was very big also. It had over forty rows of benches, just the right height so a kid around our age could sneak under. Outside was the hardest place of all. There were so many people around maneuvering could get hard. There was also an upstairs that you could only get to from outside. There were these unused tables and chairs all folded up. It would take forever for me to find them due to the many good hiding spots. What made it worse was they all hid together so I would always be by myself while looking for them. We normally only had time for one round, so I almost never got to hide.

Not only did my brother know all of my friends, they seemed to like him better in my opinion. This isn't me thinking the world is against me, they really did. I have this one cousin who is a grade between my brother and me. He would always do what my brother did. If we went to McDonald's, and my brother ordered a Happy Meal with a cheeseburger, and he ordered a Happy Meal with a cheeseburger. He wanted to be like my brother so much if he didn't get the same toy, he would go to the counter and ask for the same one. It was as if he didn't have a mind of his own, he obeyed the almighty king, a mean king who excluded me in his quests. I remember one day, my cousin and his mom drove five hours just to visit us. My brother and cousin went into my brother's room to play. When I asked to join in my brother said, “ No”. My cousin was so into my brother he even put toothpaste and hair gel on my grandma's pillow when my brother told him to. I'm not saying he was stupid or anything; he just had no mind of his own. If my brother wasn't around he would do what I asked of him. But if it came down to the choice of my brother or me I always ended up with a silver medal.

At the time, there was only one friend I had that didn't go to our church. Max was the son of my mom's friend, so of course my brother and I knew him. He was the only friend I had that was younger than me so I got the feeling he liked me better than my brother. My brother always came with me when I went to his house though. It seemed I never really got to hang out with him alone. I still remember in my first year of school, Max had a sleepover birthday party. He invited kids from our school. The only person who came who wasn't in our grade was my brother. It seemed where ever I went in life, my brother was there waiting.

Heck, he was even friends with people I didn't even know he knew. There was this one kid in my class, Jamie. We were friends; I went over to his house a couple of time to play his Nintendo 64. Well apparently he played tennis with my brother. One day after coming home from his house my brother told me that Jamie liked him better. Of course he was joking, but I didn't know that. He told me that they played tennis together, and Jamie thought I was kind of lame. That was the second time that I can remember that my brother drove me to tears. The first was when he excluded me from his room with my cousin.

My first real friend that I made became my best friend for years after. Thinking back on it, our relationship started nearly exactly the same as my brother and mine. The only difference was me. His name was Oliver; we were in the same class at school for five years. During our first year at school he would follow me around during recess. My school had this jungle gym that was in the middle of a giant sandbox. I spent my time on the jungle gym where Oliver would follow me to. Some other kids and I use to play Pokémon on a grassy field outside the jungle gym/sandbox. We would run around shouting attacks and other things, which I don't feel like saying. Oliver would just walk behind us.

I thought Oliver was just some weird kid at the time, just like my brother most likely thought of me. He followed me around the playground, just like I tried to do with my brother. At first it was really annoying and then it felt kind of creepy. When I eventually had a play-date with him he wasn't so weird at his house and I got to know him and he was pretty cool, but still very creepy. Over time I realized Oliver was an only child, and it was his way of trying to be friends. And so, I got my first very own best friend who had no idea I even had a brother