Big Brother

I have a brother. This is something I tend to forget about sometimes, and other times I wish it weren’t true. There’s nothing remarkable about having a big brother, nothing very remarkable about one who is mean to you. And there’s certainly nothing remarkable about my brother as a person.
When he was eleven years old I came into the world and replaced him as the youngest child in the family. This action, a passive action on my part, elicited a response from him that only be described as irrational hatred. Having been the youngest for so long, he believed the benefits would last forever. The attention from my mother, the nickname from his favorite sister, the encouragement from each single family member. All these he suggests I stole from him by merely entering the world.
I tell people now, as an adult, of the time he tried to kill me. It’s not an exaggeration, not a childhood call for attention. I was no more than four years old, and my fifteen year old brother hit me on the top of the head with a metal rake. I remember my sister washing my head off in the downstairs bathroom, and I offered my kewpie doll’s head to be washed too. Although when I look back now I feel that I should have been more disturbed by this event, the feelings I remember are calm and unmoved. It was unremarkable, in that time and place. I do know that at one point, it may have been before or after the murder attempt, I got him good too.
Our dining room and living room were separated only by a small hallway, you could run right through. And one day my brother took over the t.v. and made me angry. So as he leaned back on his elbows on the floor in front of the television, I backed up to the dining room’s far wall and ran all the way before kicking him right in the head. He dropped with the impact. I don’t remember feeling particularly satisfied at the time. My memory stops just after the moment of the kick.
What’s interesting is that my sister’s have told that story, to me and to everyone I know, over and over again for years. It makes them laugh until they cry, even all these years later. No one tells the attempted murder story. In my memory, I feel the same way about them. But they are interpreted much differently by the people who witnessed them.