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That Time I Broke a Wall with My Brother

I've had adventures other than almost dying. I mean, the amount of times I've almost died is probably more than average. My mom learned the baby Heimlich because I almost choked to death every single time I had cut up hot dogs as a baby.

But this isn't a story about almost dying, because I should change it up a little.

When I was 13, I broke a wall with my brother's ass. Then a few weeks later, he broke a window with my elbow.

My family lived in Delaware in 1996 and 1997, and for some reason that was the year or so my younger brother and I just hated each other. I have two younger brothers, and the youngest one was smart and stayed out of it. But my brother I had the blood feud with was 11 at the time, and had expressed anger issues since birth. He Hulk smashed a pretty big and heavy dining room chair when he was eight. And when I was 13, I was all hormones. Add in the fact that we were latchkey kids and nobody was home to interfere when things got heated, things got bad.

Mostly we got into fist fights.

Well, one day, my parents were out Christmas shopping, even though at the time I didn't know they were shopping together. You'll see why this is relevant later. Anyway, my brother and I got into a fight over something - we were fighting so much I don't even know why we were fighting. So we got into a fist fight and I shoved my brother and he landed ass first inside of the drywall.

I panicked and called my dad's apartment and left a message. Then I hid in my bed for a little while before regrouping and coming up with a story with my brother so we wouldn't get in trouble.

I don't even remember the punishment, so I think we didn't get in trouble. But we definitely didn't get away with it because I had already called my dad. Mom told us she had heard the message, which is how I found out she had been Christmas shopping with my dad.

We hid it with a bookcase until my dad spackled it. And you think my brother and I would have learned that fighting only leads to destruction.

So a few weeks later, my brother and I had gotten into another fight. He went out on the porch, so I decided I was going to lock him out. This was a thing he had done to me before, so he was the inspiration. Well, he caught on to what I was doing and used his strength to try to open the door before I could shut it and lock him out. My brother has been stronger than me since he was two. He had that rage strength. So he won the push-of-war with the door.

Unfortunately, right behind the door where I was standing was a window, and when my brother won, my elbow went right through it.

That time we got grounded. That time we had our shit together and explained it was an honest accident, but my mom said we already broke the wall and we didn't have a great track record. I mean, she wasn't incorrect.

Also, spoilers - that brother is like the chillest dude ever now. I can't remember the last time I've seen him get angry. But he also rolled over at 7 days old because he didn't like how my parents put him in the crib. Him not being angry was such an inspiring journey.

My parents raised sitcom characters. The clumsy one who keeps almost dying. The angry one that keeps breaking parts of the house, excluding the wall clumsy broke with him.  The cute one. That's always the function of the youngest one, granted, but my youngest brother made it a trademark. I have stories about that, too.

And even that year or so that we didn't get along, we tried to be sweet to each other because at the end of the day, we love each other. Well, mostly we did it with paying each other's library fines. We were 13 and 11. It's what we could do.

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