O Brother

Beating crim's in a game of darts with my Jedi brother last week got me thinking about my actual brother from a similar (well o.k., the same) mother.

Little brothers, hey? Either fuckin' with all your shit or wearing handbags wanting to be a mum while washing plastic dolls in their bath tubs, a lot of us have them. Sure I have two younger sisters but their boring, fuck that noise! The delightful gifts bestowed upon us by our parents lust and their, the less said about it the better, kind of impulses. I am lucky enough to have grown up with one of the best little brothers this side of a 20c piece. He made me laugh and he made me cry, mainly cry to be honest but I wouldn't trade him for all the Tazo's Brad Pate had in Primary School.

Now I don't remember a time without Alonzo*, only 2 years separate us and strangely enough still do. Most of my memories involve the little guy. From jumping off the top bunk with red pillow cases and enraging Mum enough for her to throw out our Superman video cassettes. To almost being punched in the face for 'whistling like frickin' Grandpa' in the supermarket not long ago. I'm now going to share a few select cuts form the delicatessen of our youth.......
 We're not allowed to have Bubble-o-Bills!
Quiet, don't say that! We won’t be a loud to get one!
So starts the first and last time for the next few years we ate said ice-cream after one of us had their 'beautiful golden curls' shaved off, due to getting gum to somehow cover half their head, never to return.
Or never being able to leave Lego out without the smaller parts disappearing, my cannon balls up someone’s nose. All beaten by the time Dad, dripping wet in all his naked glory, comes dashing from the shower of our tiny motel room after hearing Mum's catch phrase call of  'Geoffrey!!' to pull a plastic monkey that he had somehow got a whole arm hooked into his eye from the R.S.L at dinner earlier that evening. He has certainly made life entertaining that’s for sure.

He hit his peak a few years later by smashing, accidently he claims, Emma-Kate in the nose with a mallet while we were setting up the annex and tents for camping. Ensuring a visit to the hospital for her and making Morgan cry along with him also sitting in the car crying that he didn’t mean to hit her in the face and leaving me to put up the tents with which ever parent didn't them all to the hospital.

His personal favourite and the few of our friends who have heard it, is the day he just kept on peddling. Here I am at 10 or 11 on top of the world that I was tall enough to ride Dad's bike, or rather stand up on the pedals and wobble my way from one end of the driveway to the other. I do my fourth lap of the back yard and bump over the lip between the yard and the drive-way. A few nervous seconds and death wobbles later I begin gaining confidence with each spin of the wheels when all of a sudden I'm a mangled pile of bicycle, damaged pride and pain. I lay there dazed for a few seconds, the world has gone quiet and I still don't know how I ended up on the cement than who do I see racing toward the drive-way?

Like a bat out of hell in a yellow Stack Hat riding the devils own BMX comes Alonzo. Relief washes over me as I assume he races to my rescues. My relief turns to rage as to this day I will still swear he looks me in the eye, grins as if to say 'I've got you now you son-of-a-bindii-eye' (the most foul and horrendous swear word you were allowed to use in our house). Then proceeds to ride right over the top of me. As soon as I can catch a breath in my newly crushed lungs I burst into tears and howl like the little bitch I am. A trip to the hospital a few bruised ribs and a black n' blue ego later we are home and Alonzo is sent to his room 'to think about what you did to your brother'. I still swear to this day, and he won't argue, that he had plenty of time to ride around me, let alone stop! I'm now wondering if it had anything to do with the fact that I told him that I wished he was dead earlier that week?

The pain only got worse from then on. Once I showed the tiniest hint of weakness he jumped on it and never stopped jumping until one of us was in tears. The tears usually trailing off down the hallway as he ran to tell Dad. Down the hallway would come Dad followed by a tear streaked, blonde haired, face grinning smugly behind him as I got told not to fight with my little brother. To then thinking it would be hilarious to move all the wooden slats on the top bank together at the opposite end of the bed to the ladder. Resulting in me climbing up to the top only to break my nose on the corner as I fell back down. To making me cry in front of all my friends and their parents by delivering the greatest hip and shoulder the sport of AFL has ever seen. It was Saturday morning again and I probably deserved it, by doing something clever and awesome like hiding his hat in the bottom of a wet basket of washing.

We didn't always butt heads; we sometimes just took turns to hit each other with bits of wood instead. Dad had recently got us a piece of dowel to hang our model planes. We took turns hitting each other with it until the game got out of hand and we had broken it in 4 or 5 pieces. Realising that if Dad found this super expensive piece of wood broken we were dead. We stucky tapped (yes, stucky) it back together and put it back behind the door like it aint no thang. Of course he found it and we didn't get in trouble so much for breaking it but rather not knowing how it got broken in the first place, let alone stuck back together. We were sent to our room for the morning fighting the whole time about whose fault it was. We were later aloud to go to footy and now thinking back, I think it was just so could take turns hitting each other with the bit(s) of wood. It was a sick game.

As we got a bit older we didn't stop the fighting so much as left alone each other a bit more. He would whisper something in your ear like 'eat a bowl of dicks fag' over and over and over and over and over until you would snap and punch him. We would wrestle (in a totally non gay way) for a bit then make him cry and watch him storm out of the room only come back 5 minutes later asking if you wanted to go to the shops for chips and gravy like nothing had happened.

We fought less and less as we got older and haven't had a fight in 9-10 years, apart from Christmas when we had a water fight with our 'Cock-Blaster 2000'' water pistols and I lost so badly that two changes of my clothes were drenched and all my dry clothes held ransom, with the help of Morgan, under the clothes line. Leaving me to brave the gauntlet of people wanting to rip off my towel and give everyone else a view of my Christmas shrimp.

So yeah, brothers. Life would be much less dull without them. Along with my nose being straighter, my beautiful ribs being unmarked by bike tyres and a few less occasion of me crying and being embarrassed in front of all my family and friends. I still wouldn't trade him for all the Holofoil basketball cards from '94.

*Name changed for coolness reason's, Alonzo Mourning was his favourite basketball player when we were kids.
P.S- Oh and you'll never be like him!
P.P.S- I didn’t forget about the whole Sumo Boy saga. I’m going to do a whole blog on that adventure another time.

Yoto Yoto