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.

The Older Boy Situation

The other day I realized that I had never had a celebrity crush on any one who was not older than me. Even to this day the celebrities who I am attracted to are some where between ages thirty and fifty while I am only eighteen. In my defense celebrities that are close to my age consist of Justin Beiber and the boys from One Direction, and I'm sorry but  I haven't been into the pretty boy thing since I was thirteen years old.
Now it would be one thing if my fondness for older men stayed with in the realms of impossibility, such as my crushes on Hugh Jackman and Channing Tatum. But this is not nor has it ever been the case. Even when it came to my actual relationships I have always gravitated towards older guys. When I was in kindergarten I distinctly recall "dating" a third grader who I rode the  bus with. Yeah. It started that young. As I got older it only got worse. Though my boy friends never reached the ages of Hugh and Channing, they did not always stay with in the limits of legality either. On my eighteenth birthday I greatly celebrated that finally I was no longer jailbait.

Now I just want to point out right now that I am NOT one of those girls that goes out looking for older boys to date. I do not have "daddy issues" because that's just creepy. I also do not date older boys to rebel against my parents. Trust me I could think of a lot more rebellious things to do to cause my parents to have a heart attack if I really wanted to. I simply attract older guys and then in turn end up falling for them. I realized that it may have been turning into a habit about a year ago when I told one of my close friends about the first time I made out with my now boyfriend (now age 21, then age 20) and her reaction was to crack up laughing, look me in the eyes and say at an unreasonably loud sound decibel, "Are you shitting me? Another one? You made out with another twenty year old? You gotta be shitting me! She made out with another twenty year old!!" At that point I realized that possibly it was getting a little bit ridiculous, but what was I going to do? Limit myself to only the boys my friends, family, and society deemed acceptable? Absolutely not! I would not ever limit myself just because other's thought I was wrong, not with my dating choices or with anything else. 

When I first began dating my current boyfriend I was sixteen, soon to turn seventeen, and he was twenty. More than handful of people (i.e. my parents) showed disapproval at the age difference but I am happier than I have ever been with any guy and am in the most serious relationship I have ever been in. With that being said I am in no way promoting forty year old men "falling in love" with sixteen year old girls, I am simply saying that my older guy habit seems to working well for me.

 

The good child

My parents refer to me as their "good child". I suppose in all honesty I would indeed be described as a good girl. Though I often contemplate whether I'm their good child or if I'm just really sneaky. The more likely reason why I am their good child is much less about me and the argument between whether I'm "good" or just sneaky and more about their previous child. The fact is that the expectations of behavior were set rather low by my older brother. Though he is a very good person he never exactly wore a halo or received special Good Kid lunch passes in middle school (which yes did exist, and yes I did receive). It was actually quite easy to reach Good Child of the family status, I got good grades in school and never presented the devious capability or desire to force my Spanish teacher into early retirement.
But when it came to being the good child, especially after I started high school. I would have preferred to be my brother. I would have preferred to have been the oldest so that I could I have no one to be compared to. I could be absolutely irresponsible and carefree and make my parents prematurely grey and they would have no idea what was hitting them because they would know nothing about teenagers. But as the second child I was completely weighed down with expectations and my parents had been around the block and knew exactly how to make me not behave like my brother. And so as the second child I was forced to become "The Good Child", or at least to be very very sneaky.

Little Freshman dating Big Senior

When you're a freshman girl and you are asked out by a senior boy you think you are hot stuff. Even if the guy is an absolute loser who you've known for less than a week. Of course the fact that your family won't like it Just makes him seem even more appealing because you have yet to figure out that sometimes your family Just might know what they're talking about.
Jason was a senior when I was a freshman and a bit of what you might call a creep. He would randomly play guitar in the cafeteria and be extremely touchy with whoever he was talking to. He had blond hair fashionably styled into a bowl cut and pushed his chest out and his stomach in to make himself look tough and muscular when he really was neither. This bored, angry look was stuck on his face while he walked around school; because he was "too cool". Being the naive freshman I was, I bought completely into him. To me, he really was "too cool".
We met on a Monday afternoon in the cafeteria through a few mutual friends and flirted everyday that week during lunch. I found out that we had almost identical tastes in music and I was gone. Jason asking me out was the equivalent of a sixth grader asking me out; there was no actual date we Just kind of decided to be "dating" after barely a week of knowing each other.
"So do you want to go out or something sometime?" He asked me.
"Yeah, sure." I said in my flirty, giggly voice.
"Um... So we are like dating? " I really should have Just said no at this but like I said, I was gone.
"Um I don't know..." A near by friend told us that we were so I gave him a hug. Later that night was when things started to really unfold.
Mom and I were driving home from grandmothers house when I told her. "Mom, I... I have a boyfriend... today."
My mom laughed a little at me, "Just for today?"
I started to laugh at myself, too. "Oh... well...no... well you know what I mean.. he asked me out today."
She remained nonchalant and not even really caring, I almost thought I might get a way with this for a minute. "What's his name?"
"Jason." please do not ask me how old he is... I thought.
"Oh, how old is he?" Of course she asked how old he is.
"Um, seventeen." This was a complete lie, he was eighteen, not seventeen. I was only fourteen.
"Oh," there was only slight concern in her voice at this point, "he's a ....junior?"
I thought about lying and saying yes but my older brother knew Jason and knew he was a senior and would not hesitate to narc me out. "No... he's a senior."
"NOOO!" She screamed the word. I swear the cars around us heard her.
"But mooom!!" I had to raise my voice to compete with her raised voice.
"You are NOT dating a senior!!"
"But mom I like him!" This really was my only defense.
She didn't respond immediately. After a very awkward pause, she asked "Does James know him?"
James was my older brother, "Yeah, he does." I really wasn't sure if this was going to help me or hurt me. This rest of the car ride home was silent.
When I got home James and his best friend Kyle were upstairs and my dad had left town for work. I knew if I didn't tell them about jason they would just find out from someone at school. I went upstairs and leaned in the door way of James room, "I just thought I'd let you guys know that im dating Jason Smith." The immediate responce was a loud burst of laughter, but as the weekend went on they stopped finding it funny.
The next morning James had gone to work early and kyle and mom were both down stairs. Kyle of course greeted me with , "I can't beleive you think you're dating Jason Smith."
"I am dating Jason Smith," I corrected him with an attitude.
"NO YOU ARE NOT!" He argued loudly.
Mom told us to be quiet from the laundrey room. Just then James's other friend Drew walked in.
"Hey Drew guess who Megan thinks she's dating?" Kyle said.
"Oh yeah, stop talking to smith." Apparently Drew already heard about the news. It's amazing how quickly news spreads through a small high school. "Does Bill know?" Drew went onto ask, of course refering to my dad by his first name.
"No, he's out of town." Mom answered.
"I'll tell him when he comes back on Monday," I said in a sad attempt to some how defend myself.
"I'm going to call him and tell him now!" Kyle decided.
At this statement, Mom intervened, "Kyle just wait until he gets back."
But it was too late, Kyle was already on the phone calling my dad. "Bill your daughter thinks she's dating a senior!" He lost connection after his anouncement, but received a text from dad immediattely after the call was dropped. It said, whats going on there?
This was the basic pattern of the whole weekend. The conversation continued to circle around to the fact that I "thought" I was dating a senior and how everyone who was even remotely in my life didn't like it.
Everyone kept saying how there were pleanty of other boys for me to date.
"But I don't WANT to date anyone else! I like Jason!" I would argue to no end.
"But honey, you don't know if you like him. You don't even know this kid!" Mom would argue back.
Drews arguement was little bit different than moms, "He grabbed her butt in school!!"
Mom looked at me with wide eyes.
"No he didn't!" I would argue back at Drew.
"Yes he did!" Drew defended himself, "I saw it!"
Then my grandmother came over sunday afternoon. Of course they had to fill her in on exactly what was happening. And of course she had to side with everyoneelse. "Now, Megan, honey, there are plenty of freshmen you could date. Or sophmores. Or even a junior."
To this I just replyed with, "Nana you don't even know!"
Sunday night was when I realized there was no way I could date this guy. James's friend Julie texted me and instead of telling me I needed to break up with him because dating him was wrong she simply just made me realize that a dating an eighteen year old who I had know for a week and at only fourteen was maybe not my brightest idea. The one thing that she told me that really made me think was when she said; I just you are so young and have pleanty of time to date and shouldn't rush into anything. That, I'll admit, rather cliche line plus the fact that I knew Jason and I would never be able to have a second alone together with out my parents, my brother, or any of my brothers friends breatheing down our necks and out of fear of being locked in a tower forever, I decided I had to break up with him.
I had kept Jason updated on what was happening at the house all weekend. When I walked into the cafeteria on Monday at lunch he was sitting alone at one of the tables near the wall. He knew what was about to happen. I awkwardly walked up to him. "I... can't date you."
He seemed kind of understanding, "I know."
"I'm really sorry," and I really was sorry at the time.
He smiled understandingly, "Don't worry about it."
Later that day I found out that I after I had left the cafeteria he angrily went up to my friend and asked, using profanity, why I had done that. My friend explained to him how none of my family would let me date him and that I felt uncomfortable being a freshman dating a senior. He then expressed, once again useing profanity, that he didn't care what my family thought and that I had, after a week of knowing him, broke his heart.
Now that I think about it I'm glad I didn't actually date him. What I'm not so glad about is how my brother nor any of his friends will let me forget about that time I dated "that weird senior with a bowl cut."