My Brother, My Rival

Little brothers live to torture their elder siblings. I had the boys at McDonald’s. They both had eaten and had finagled their toys from me. They were Hotwheels cars or something like that and eventually little T.Puzzle steals his older brother’s car. Full Speed lets out a whiny cry and little T.Puzzle begins to run in circles around him all the while smiling with glee. I do my best to intervene but sense that T.Puzzle is about to take flight. I manage to get him back towards Full Speed and tell him to hand the stolen toy back to his brother nicely.

Of course he launches it across the room and instead of a sweet apology he barks out ‘sorry!’ like a drill sergeant.

I do my best to correct him. I make him pick up the toy and actually hand it to Full Speed. Then I have him say sorry until it sounds at least slightly (ever so slightly) sincere and we move on with our evening.

I try to cut the kid some slack. I am a younger sibling, too. I understand sometimes it’s hard to be in the shadow of an older sibling but I don’t condone being mean or violent. He could always do what I did. He could hit his older sibling and as Full Speed comes in for a counter attack, he could run behind me and scream, “Full Speed’s trying to hit me!” My sister used to love it when I did that to her (not really).

If I had to do it all again, I’m glad I have my sister. She has known me my entire lifetime and thankfully, still wants to be my friend. I hope my boys are friends when they grow older, too. By the looks of this following picture where little T.Puzzle is happily making Full Speed cringe, I’m not so sure. Fingers crossed.