Living with Zach is not usually something I think about because he is there everyday, every minute, and every second. Whenever my parents try to introduce me to one of their boring friends or some uncle on my mom’s side twice removed. They always try to get to know me (which I think is just really creepy considering I just met them and really couldn’t care less what their name is and where they come from ?) and ask questions like: how old are you? What grade are you in? Do you have any siblings? And I always feel like giving the same answer: “I’m 34 years old and in the 4th grade, but as you can tell, I have been held back for many years.” All the old geezers in my family would fall for that one, I’m almost certain of it. But, of course I don’t, and I say in my most sugarcoated voice: (I also slur some of my Ss, add a lot of “Ands” and add a few THs to sound all cute and shy. But I do try not to overdo it to much, but hey! They’re so old they probably can’t tell what I’m saying half the time anyway!!)
First, I started liking Barbie dolls, bought over 20 Barbies, lost over 50 of their shoes(no lie), ate about 3 of them, gave them totally weird outfits and hairstyles that any fashion police would totally ticket and started having tea parties with water instead of tea because I think tea tastes like nail polish…don’t ask. Then I did finger-painting on an easel on the deck (literally…), and bunch of other stuff that involved Disney Princesses such as Belle, Jasmine, Cinderella and practicing fancy waves for what seemed like hours but was probably minutes because I had the attention-span of a fly.
And here’s what Zachary did. He(and keep in mind, we were about 6 or 7, NOT 4) played with legos and built millions of creations that he soon pulverized into the carpet. He played with poke’mon action figures that he chewed on just like a big slobbery dog, ran around the house being annoying and stomping all over my girl stuff (Please, don’t ask why…because I REALLY don’t know), just ran around in general being annoying plus screaming “CHICKEN LICKEN!” at the top of his voice, and making me wish I didn’t know him (which, may I point out, he sometimes still does? although I will always love him).
An average day when we were little would start out like this: First (I’m not really sure how old we were, but I’m pretty sure it was our last year sleeping in a crib so clearly we weren’t all that young) I would wake up to the squeaks and creaks of my brother’s crib being bounced on by none other than Zachary. Then I would start bouncing and making my crib creak and squeak just like his to wake up our parents. We did this because our cribs had some sort of ingenious locks on them so, without an adults help, us little kids couldn’t get out of them and fall down the stairs while our parents were sleeping. While we were bouncing and getting tired, trying to wake our parents up who had their door shut halfway down the hall, and no doubt were sleeping soundly, we eventually would stop bouncing and I would lay down again with my pink, chewed up unicorn with its multi-colored mane and try to count the glow-in-the-dark stars on our ceiling. Of course back then, I probably could only count to 10 or 15, so of course I couldn’t get very far before I would start over again. While I was in the midst of this extremely trivial pursuit of counting the stars, my oh-so-clever-brother would just calmly sit-down and try to figure out the lock as he had done every morning for as far as I could remember.
After this, when we were so cleverly let out, we would run on down the stairs pushing and shoving our way into the kitchen to see which one of us would get the good bowl. In this case it was a shiny red plastic bowl with a built in straw that, when you were finished eating your cereal, you could slurp up the leftover milk. We always had fruity pebbles when we were little, so we loved drinking up the extra fruit flavored milk until there was nothing left but a single drop. He usually got there first and got the bowl, but when I did I would refuse to use the straw and I would put my mouth to the rim of the bowl and tilt the bowl back in hope of getting a mouthful of that fruity flavor, but instead getting a nose-full of it and the rest of it on my pajamas.
Zach forgave me for every mistake I did when I was little, even though I was the older one. When Zach was playing a computer-game and left to go eat lunch, I would sit in the chair and try to start playing the game although I lost constantly and erased most of his saves by accident of course, he forgave me every time. I really appreciate my brother and I’m sure that he appreciates me too even after everything we’ve been through. After we had a day full of ice-cream, naps and fun, we would settle down for sleep. Then once again, I would count the stars on the ceiling that now, since it was dark out, were glowing and shed just enough to be seen out of the corner of your eye, but if you looked hard, they would practically disappear, and as I was doing this, I knew that Zach was either counting them too, or trying to gnaw the lock off again.