The one about my brothers

When people learn that I have three brothers, it often draws up a reaction like Ahh, that explains a lot. 

What exactly does it explain, I wonder. Some say it's the reason why I'm so patient. Some say it's what fuels my competitive nature. Others think I was raised with special treatment and that my brothers were overprotective of their only sister, which could not be further from the truth. We could spend hours analyzing all sorts of theories, but that's not why I'm writing today. As today is National Siblings Day, join me on a stroll down Memory Lane as I share an anecdote about each brother of mine.

Brian: The One Whose Existence I Couldn't Deny No Matter How Hard I Tried

At a point in our early childhood years, we shared a bedroom and had matching 101 Dalmatians bedsheets. When he was in first grade and worked on his homework after school, I insisted on doing it with him. Sometime after that, our sibling affection faded.

As an incoming seventh grader, I had recently joined the cross country team. My older brother, Brian, had already been on the team for two years. Thank goodness we had minimal interaction at practice due to most of the workouts being split by age and gender. Neither of us was going to voluntarily claim the other as a blood relative in front of our peers. Gross. We were well into the third week of practice when we had our first meet. In the girl's warm-up circle, a teammate openly shared her feelings regarding my brother's muscles. It paralyzed me on the spot. "Eww! That's my brother!" All secrets were out.

Fast forward over a decade: our sibling affection has been restored and that teammate is now my sister-in-law.

Chris: The Reason Why I am Not a Doctor

I was perhaps six years old. The bundle of joy that made me a big sister about two years prior was now a maniacal, trouble-making toddler. In a series of events probably involving daycare children chasing each other, my brother Chris managed to run his forehead into the corner of a brick chimney in our house. My dad happened to be home from work, so he called the clinic as my mom tended to my brother's wound. She gave me a handful of gauze and told me to hold it on his head as we piled into the van and drove to the doctor's office, blood oozing every which way. My dad stayed home with the daycare kids and cleaned up all the blood droplets on the floor. At the doctor's office I was made to witness the whole ordeal, horrified by the doctor's step-by-step explanation as he stitched my brother's head back together. I specifically recall him opening a package with a stick and cotton ball thing covered in some yellowish liquid. "This is called the numbing. This part will hurt the worst," the doctor explained. He brought the stick to my brother's forehead. Cue toddler screams and sister disgust. They gave my brother a dinosaur Band-aid and all was well. The physical wounds healed, but the sister's trauma lives on.

Nick: The One Who Turned Out to Be Okay Despite Not Being a Girl

I was called to the school office one day in my first grade career because I had received a phone call. I trotted down the hall as if I were the most important person in the world and made my way to the office. "You have a new baby brother!" my Dad proclaimed on the other side of the line. My walk back to the classroom was not as peppy. "She had another boy," I unexcitedly shared with my classmates.

We went on a family road trip from Minnesota to Seattle and back when my youngest brother, Nick, was a storytelling history enthusiast trapped in the body of a four year old. As we traversed the Badlands, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and threw rocks into the Puget Sound, stories about the "olden days" emerged. It turns out, my brother was once-upon-a-time colleagues with the likes of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. In the olden days he had even fired cannons from a military fort against invading pirates. We had a portable TV in our family van for watching movies as we drove, but we honestly would have been just as entertained without the TV by only listening to Nick's stories. After that trip I started recording interviews with him about the olden days using a blank cassette tape and a children's cassette player. Whatever happened to those recordings is a mystery. 

Three brothers. Ahh, that explains a lot.