The meaning of the word "Brother"

When I am asked how many siblings I have I am obligated to reply with “only one” but that’s only counting my one biological brother. In reality I have never had only one brother. I have had many different brothers. Many of them have come into my life and left, and eventually new brothers come into my life. But being consistently in someone’s life is not a big part of being someone’s brother. A brother is a playmate, a protector, a pest, a bully, and a parent.

            My brother, James, always had many friends over and I eventually adopted them  as my secondary brothers. When I was in middle school we would all play tag in the icy tundra of my back yard in the winter. In the summer my parents would bring us to the river and we would play Marco-Polo and push each other off of the large rocks into the cool water. There were times when they made me so mad I thought I was going to kill them and I would be lying if I said they were some of Woodstock’s finest. In truth, they were thugs, even James, but when any one would spread rumors or call them names like “wangsters” I would defend them, because they were my brothers. This group of boys who I grew up with did not stay around for long. By the time I started high school most of the group had parted from one another. A few them kind of fell off the face of the Earth, one became a dad, and recently I heard that one was arrested. But these boys who I grew up with were, at one point, my brothers.

            When I started high school there was a new group of boys always at the house and soon they became my older brothers- my very protective older brothers. I still hold to the fact that James had spies in the school; after all he was a senior when I was a freshman and could not possibly be everywhere I was to prevent upperclassmen (or any boy) from hitting on me. If was walking down the hall with a guy friend and standing in the cafeteria talking to a boy it was not uncommon for one of James’s friends ( some of them I barely knew) to walk up them , look them intimidatingly in the eye and say “hey you better not mess with her, she’s James sister.”

            At the beginning of the second semester of my freshman year I decided I was going to try to date a senior. This was not a good idea. After I told my mom about this senior boy I met and was going to date, she freaked out a bit. But her reaction was calm compared to the boy’s reaction. Since my dad was out of town for the weekend my brother’s best friend decided it was up to him to call my dad and let him know, “your daughter thinks she’s dating a senior”. My father’s response to this phone call was “take care of it.” As I argued with this brother of mine, another brother walked in the door and said, without any of us informing him of what was going, “Megan, stop talking to that boy.” If I had any doubt about how many brothers I really had up until that point, that weekend answered my question, because every boy who walked into the house that weekend had something to say about me trying to date a senior. These were boys who had literally no blood relation to me what so ever, but they were my brothers. No matter what your blood lines say, if you are ever asked whether or not you have a brother, think about whether or not you have or had someone who would yell at you persistently for dating a senior when you are a freshman. If you do, then the answer is yes, you do indeed have a brother.

I don't want to grow up.

It has occurred to me that there are possibly some high school teachers out there (especially in Shenandoah County ) that became high school teachers not to "mold young minds" but to continuously relive their glory days. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting grow up. I completely understand the thought mentality. Like those high school teachers I also don't want to grow up, but it's not that I'm hung up over high school. I'm actually quite ready for those days to be over. My desire to not want to grow up lies in the days of Disney movies and Barbie dolls. Elementary school and younger is where my glory days are. Think about it; you were too cute for your parents to get too mad at, your biggest problems were that you were out of cookies and your Land Before Time video tape was skipping, and it was acceptable to wear a plastic tiara in public. I'm sorry but screw reliving high school. I want to be five again.

Meeting The Third Parent

A lot of girls fear the first time they have to bring a significant other home to their parents. In my case my parents weren't a huge worry. My protective older brother, on the other hand, was. Right before my second date with my first serious boyfriend my brother decides that he wanted to meet this boy because he didn't understand how he knew every other person in town except for this boy.

Before he actually met my date my brother's best friend, Kyle, and I sat in the living room as my brother sat in nothing but his boxers and discussed what he was going to do when my date came in to meet him. His most disturbing and entertaining idea was to put socks on his hands and use them as puppets. He even demonstrated to Kyle and I by using his sock puppets to say "Hi Philip! How are you!" At that I gave him two conditions to meeting Philip: 1. He was not to use the sock puppets. and 2. He had to wear pants. He agreed to the first condition on account to not wanting my date to think he was mentally retarded. In response to the second condition he draped a blanket over his legs to make it look like he was wearing pants rather than just picking up his pants that were laying in the middle of the floor in front of him and actually putting them on his body. After my terribly demanding conditions were established Kyle and I went outside to wait for my doomed date to arrive.

Kyle sat down in a wooden chair on the front porch,  took a knife from his pocket and stabbed it into the arm of the chair. As I was yelling at him to put it away my date stepped onto the porch. I looked at him nervously and said, "Hi, this is my brother's friend, Kyle. Kyle, this is Philip."
Kyle shook his and said hi, then sat back down and said, "You can go on in now, Megan's brother is very anxious to meet you." I instantly thought the sentence, wait am I suddenly in a scene of  The Godfather? But, Unfortunately, I was not in a scene of The Godfather, this was actually my life.

I walked Philip into the house and lead him down the hall way, into the living room, where James sat, pantsless in the corner arm chair to "assert himself as the dominate male". When we walked in James was pretending to sleep (possibly another technique to assert himself as the man of the house?).
"James, James, wake up." I said, admittedly holding back laughter.

"W-w-what?" He stuttered as he pretended to wake up from his fake slumber.

"This is Philip. Philip, This is my brother, James."

James looked over the boy who was taking out his sister and simply said, "Oh. Okay." He looked across the room at the remote control he planted. "Philip would you mind getting that remote for me?" Philip responded with "Oh sure" and picked up the remote and gave it to him. Test passed.

We left the house and returned to the front porch with Kyle. At this point we were almost successfully out of the house with no mention that James was still sitting beneath his blanket with no pants on. Until we were about to leave and Kyle said "Hey, is your brother still not wearing pants?"

I looked at Philip, "Um I'm not sure."

"He was wearing a blanket..." Philip answered.

Kyle and I both shook our heads and said "No. He's not wearing pants." When we got to the car, Philip asked me "So why wasn't your brother wearing pants?" I had no real response when he asked. And now the only real reason I could come up with for James not wearing pants and just generally acting the way he did is that his strategy for scaring away my boyfriends was to act as weird and socially unacceptable as possible.