It’s not that I TRY to hurt my brother. Things just happen, that’s all. I mean, sure I wrestle with him, and we fight, and sometimes I punch him a little too hard and stuff, but I never MEAN to hurt him. Not to really HURT him, anyway.
Whenever he gets hurt, everyone assumes it’s cause I set out to kill him or something. Yeah, ok, I stabbed him in the eye with the flaming end of a firecracker punk, but that was an accident! The firecracker’s fuse burst into flames and startled me, so I jumped back, flailing my arms in a backward motion away from the firecracker, lit punk in hand. How was I to know he was standing right behind me, leaning over, eyes wide open, watching what I was doing?
And those times when he broke his nose on account of me? Coincidences! First, when I was hiding in the bushes making noises, I didn’t KNOW that would startle the horse he was riding and cause it to kick Ben off. Then those times when I opened the car-door in his face really fast? I didn’t see him! All four times, he was hidden underneath the car window! And when he fell off the dryer on his face cause I tripped and fell, pushing him off? Ok, I’m to blame for that, yeah, but it’s not like I intentionally fell into him!
Of course, there’s also the stitches incident. Again, that’s NOT my fault. Ok, sure, TECHNICALLY I was the reason he got the stitches. But I wasn’t trying to kill him! It was all just an incredibly bizarre string of unlikely coincidences.
See, he was just always in the wrong spot at the wrong time…
I carefully leaned the ladder up against the north side of the small gray shed, fighting with the uneven ground to find a solid footing for the base of the ladder. Once I was confident it wasn’t going to slide either way while I was on it, I climbed to the top, clutching the ladder tightly as I ascended. I hated heights, and I hated climbing ladders even more. I like knowing that the object I’m holding onto is nice and solid, and I’ve climbed enough ladders to know that they are often anything but.
Grabbing the edge of the roof as best as I could for balance, I stretched my foot out and onto the shingles of the roof. Using my foot and my other hand as leverage, I launched myself over the final rung of the ladder and onto the sturdy shed.
I crawled my way to the top of the shed, the sloped roof being slanted just enough that I dared not walk. Not slanted enough to keep the bricks from sliding off, however. Which was really the reason I was up there. Because we’d kept throwing them up there until they wouldn’t slide off. My brother and I made it into a game. We each tried to see who could get the most to stay up there, and who could get theirs to stay up the highest.
I won, of course. I always won. My prize, it appeared, was that I had to climb up there and clean all the bricks back off the roof.
Cleaning the bricks off the roof wouldn’t have been such a chore if I didn’t know that I also had to stack them up after they were back off the roof. Sliding bricks off a roof is fun; stacking is work. I hated work.
I slid up to my champion brick, the one that had gotten the highest, and slid it off the back of the roof, where the bricks had to be stacked. I watched it fall to the ground and winced when it shattered upon landing. Dad wanted these bricks intact, so I had to be more careful when I dropped them.
Reasoning that the ground at back of the shed was too hard from the alleyway’s rocks that were spread out everywhere, I decided to try the front of the shed. I carefully slid down to the front of the roof, and kicked one of the bricks off. I heard it hit the ground with a thud, and when I peeked over to see if it had broken, I saw that it had indeed stayed intact.
Thus, I proceeded to kick off all the bricks at the base of the shed’s roof, clearing off most of them. The bricks on the far south side of the roof needed to be moved, since directly underneath them was two cement slabs that helped make up the pathway from the shed back to the house.
Grabbing one of the bricks, I slid it over to the north side and pushed it off into oblivion, listening to the thud to make sure it didn’t hit anything and break. I then reached up and grabbed a brick from further up the roof and slid it down and off. It slid off really easy, giving me an idea. Sliding further up the roof, I grabbed one of the bricks at the top. Giving it a nice heave, it shot off the front of the roof, landing in the soft dirt with a loud thud. I proceeded to do this with several others, and when I’d cleared off the top of the roof, I went down and grabbed the remaining bricks at the south end and drug them up to the top, where I proceeded to shoot them off as well, listening to the thuds to see if it hit dirt of brick. Whenever I heard a cracking noise, I changed the direction I was sliding the bricks off.
And then I heard two thuds from one brick, followed by a deafening, high-pitched wail. I sat frozen where I was at as I watched my brother run out from under the shed and into the house, screaming the entire way, shrieking that I was trying to kill him as he opened the door.
The brick had apparently landed on the back of Ben’s head, gashing it pretty good. Good enough for Dad to come running out of the house and drag me off the roof of the shed to spank the hell out of my ass for a while. My parents bandaged up Ben’s wound, put ice on his head while they gave him some ice cream and let him watch movies while I was grounded to my room. When I asked if I could have some ice cream too, I got another spanking and another day of being grounded to my room.
See what I mean? Totally not my fault. I was just up on the roof, minding my own business, cleaning off the bricks LIKE I WAS TOLD to do, and suddenly I’m getting spanked and grounded! If Ben had been up on the roof helping me clean the mess he helped make, he wouldn’t have been under the shed to get hit in the head with a brick! It’s just as much his fault as it was mine.
Ben didn’t get stitches from that, though. No, that comes later. Here’s where the ‘incredibly bizarre string of unlikely coincidences’ that I mentioned earlier REALLY starts to kick in.
It had been weeks since the neighbors had moved away, and I reasoned that it was pretty obvious they weren’t coming back, as they hadn’t come back yet. Which of course meant, I also reasoned, that everything on their property was fair game. Climbing over the huge wooden fence that Dad had built to separate our yard from the neighbor’s yard, on account of Dad hating everyone, I hopped down onto the other side and looked around.
I had seen the yard plenty of times, of course. Every day as I walked home from school, I walked past the yard. I peeked through the little cracks and holes in the fence several times a day to see what the neighbors were up to. I’d also helped Dad build the fence, so I was able to see plenty of their yard then, since I was facing their yard the entire time I was helping to put the fence up.
This time was different though. All those other times, I was just looking at a yard. Now I was looking for a new toy to play with. The first thing that caught my eye was the tool shack. A small red and white striped shed make out of a thin metal. I’d seen it a hundred dozen times already, but not like THIS. THIS time, the lock was missing.
I threw open the doors and had a look inside. It still had quite a lot of tools and such in there, given that the neighbors weren’t coming back. I was very much pleased. I started to rummage through the various items, pushing aside the ones I recognized from my own Dad’s garage. Every weekend I had to use those for yard work with my Dad, so I had no desire to play with them. The last time Dad had caught me playing with his rake, he’d assumed that meant I wanted to do some work. I had no intention of making that mistake again.
Something red in the far corner caught my eye, so I reached way back and grabbed its handle. Whatever was attached to the handle was buried under a pile of other tools, so I had to yank and pull to get it dislodged. Pulling it free and out into the light, I got a much better look at it. It was a long red metal pole, with a circular handle at the top, much like the ‘D’ shaped handle at the end of my Dad’s snow shovel. At the base of the pole was what appeared to be a circular disk that spiraled down towards a short spike at the very end. I had no idea what it did, but I knew I wanted to find out.
Dragging the pole closer to the fence, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to climb the fence AND carry this thing along with me at the same time. The fence was at least seven feet high, so I was going to need to use all my strength to throw this metal pole over and into our yard. Grabbing the circular handle piece with one hand and placing my other hand further down the pole to help lift, I spun my body in a circle, swinging the pole along with me, before planting my feet and hurling my new metal toy up and over the top of the wooden fence.
And then I heard two distinct thumps, followed immediately by an ear-shattering wail. I heard my brother run shrieking into the house, hollering that I was trying to kill him again as he closed the door.
I tried to hurry over the fence to hide my new toy before my Dad found out what I’d done, but his anger was faster than my fear, as he was already outside and ripping me off the top of the fence before I could even finish climbing down.
As luck would have it, the pole struck Ben on the EXACT SAME wound on his head that I’d given him just four days earlier. And I got the EXACT same punishment I’d received before. A severe spanking, grounded for two days, and no ice cream.
Now you CAN’T tell me I did anything wrong there. Well, apart from taking a tool from the ex-neighbor’s shed. How was I to know my brother was on the other side of that fence? I can barely throw a football in a straight line, and suddenly I’m capable of hurling a large metallic object over a seven foot tall fence, my vision of the other side blocked, and PURPOSELY striking the exact same spot on my brother’s head?
You’d think that a large metal spike hitting him in the head, in the same spot that a brick landed on his head a measly four days prior, would have been enough to give him stitches, but not yet. They even took him to the hospital, but the doctor said he was lucky. I doubt the doctor would have said that though, had he known Ben would be back just four days later.
Finally, I had finished all the chores my Dad wanted done for the day. For the past three days, ever since the ‘post hole digger’ incident, I’d been outside working on the yard with Dad. Mowing the lawn, pulling weeds in the garden, picking tomatoes, chopping firewood, raking the driveway, cleaning the garage… But I was finally done. Only because the sun went down and it was too dark too keep working, but for the moment, I was free.
There was only an hour left before bedtime, and it was too dark to play outside anyway, so I figured I could play some Nintendo. I ran into the house, letting the door swing shut behind me as I rushed through the house towards my room. When I reached the door, I swung it open, and saw my brother playing the Nintendo instead.
I begged him to get off so I could play, but he refused, claiming he had ‘just started’. It was a lie, I knew. He’d been inside all day long, and I knew Mom wouldn’t make him do any work what with him still in pain from that sore on his head.
I was furious. I slammed the door as I left and went into the living room and pleaded with Mom to make Ben get off so I could play for a while. I stated my case and told her that he’d been inside playing all day while I was outside working, and this was the only chance I had to play before bed. She informed me that I should have thought of that before I tried to murder my brother.
Realizing that this was going nowhere, I stormed back into my room, mad as I’ve ever been. I was enraged! This wasn’t fair! It wasn’t my fault God was trying to kill him by putting him in harms way all the time! I stomped up to our bedroom door, turned the knob, and threw the door open as hard as I could.
Right into my brother’s face.
He fell backwards, seemingly dazed, stumbling and flailing his arms as if trying to grab hold of something to break his fall. Unfortunately, his hands found nothing, and he stumbled backwards, hard, smashing the back of his head - the SAME spot on his head where he’d injured himself twice before over the past week - into the edge of the base of the top bunk bed, before crumpling to the floor, holding his head.
This time he didn’t scream and run. This time, he just held his head and cried. That’s when I knew he was REALLY hurting. I also knew that I was in more trouble now than I’d ever been in before in my life. I stood there, debating what to do, when Ben pulled his hands away from his head and looked at them. And then the screaming began.
And that’s what brings me here. My parents think I have some sort of anger management problem or something, and some deep hidden hatred for my brother, and they’re thinking you can help me with that… But as you can see, I don’t hate my brother! Like I said, it’s been nothing but a string of coincidences, involving two people who were each obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not trying to kill Ben. I haven’t attacked him on purpose or anything like that.
Now, if you want to talk about malicious behavior, you need to bring HIM in here and ask him about how I got this scar on my hand! Don’t let him fool you though; he’ll try to claim it was all an ACCIDENT and he didn’t MEAN to swing that rusty metal pipe and slash open my fingers.
As if!