Alpha Biographies

Letter: B

B is for Brother

I know you’re not supposed to have favorites when it comes to people, especially with your family, but out of everyone, the one person that gets on my nerves the least is my brother. He’s about 8 years younger than me, and he was born 6 days before I turned 9. My parents used to joke and say that he was an early birthday present, but at the age of 9 I failed to see why they were laughing at the fact that I now had a new living baby in my life instead of a new barbie doll. I didn’t want another sibling, especially a brother, but I was kind of stuck with him. But once I got to see him for the first time, I knew that I was wrong. He was instantly special to me, and I knew that I was probably going to turn into the over-protective older sister.  

 

And 9 year old me was right about something for once! I’m totally the over-protective older sister. I’m constantly telling him to be careful, don’t do this, don’t do that, stuff like that. But surprisingly, it doesn’t bug him. When I tell him to be careful, he just smiles, hugs me, and says okay. Whenever I tell him not to do something, he argues, but not in a ‘oh my god I hate you quit it’ sort of way. It’s more of a ‘I’m going to do this and I’m going to be fine and you’re going to quit worrying’. He’s right most of the time, he’s not going to get hurt, I’m over-reacting, but I’m the older sister, I can’t take any chances.

 

From how I’m describing him, he sounds like an average 3-4 year old boy. And he is, in a way, but he’s delayed. He’s 5 right now, almost 6, but in some ways he acts like a 3 year old. I’m not even being mean to him right now, that’s part of his delay, he talks like he’s 3 years old. We used to have speech therapists come in to help him, and one of them taught him sign language, which of course everyone else had to pick up on in order to understand him. He’s gotten a lot better, he can talk now, although some words are harder to understand than others.

 

One of my favorite memories of him is from a couple years ago, during the summer. Our neighbor had three gardens in the back of his house, and at the time, he was turning up the soil to start planting, when my brother, sister and I came over and decided to help because we were bored. We sat around in the grass and waited for something to do, and then my sister got an awesome idea. We would stand back from the garden, and then run forward and right as we hit the edge, we would slide on our stomachs and basically face plant into the dirt. Our neighbor would be worried that we were hurt, but then we would come up laughing. We got my brother to do it too, and every time, he would laugh harder than any of us because it was just that funny to him.

I really do love my brother, he’s one of the best things that has come into my life.

Life Lesson: Family is forever, I guess?