The day has arrived. My big brother is now twenty-one. That
makes him, in deeply incoherent terms, a proper adult. HOW HAS THIS HAPPENED?
The last time I looked he was sixteen…
I am intensely grateful to whoever or whatever created
siblings – admittedly they can drive you mad (sorry bro), be so irritatingly
and obviously better behaved than you (just showing me up bro) , and have been
known to push you to stealing their action man, accidentally snapping its leg
off and hiding it behind the sofa... (I can only apologise bro). But they also
provide a live-in friend for the majority of your childhood: someone to make up
imaginary worlds with, build sandcastles with and share strange jokes with,
that only you two really understand.
So what can I say about my brother? He is annoyingly
intelligent, deeply boring and has developed an alarming tendency to
cross-dress in his University productions and pantomimes. He is also incredibly
funny, compassionate, and articulate and I am fiercely proud and fond of him.
Without a sibling, my childhood would have been an intensely
uneventful affair. From being my perpetual playmate when we were little, my
brother developed other roles when we got older: unofficial maths homework
helper outer, GCSE and A level depression banisher and then University
application stress counsellor. In many ways he had a tougher deal than me, as
he did not have someone’s example to follow – as the elder sibling he was the
first to begin the horrors of secondary school, the first to deal with important
exams and the first to leave home to go to University. When I got to secondary
school the way had already been paved for me. I knew of the teachers, my
brother’s friends and the general ‘etiquette’ of how to behave as a snotty year
seven. One core piece of advice (on the sight of my knee high socks worn with a
skirt that I thought were super cool) was “Don’t wear those. They will take
them off you and tie you to a lamp post with them at break time.” The following
evening my eleven year old self could be found sadly removing all trace of knee
high socks from my wardrobe and solemnly placing them in a black bin liner.
Heart break doesn't really cover it.
There are of course other incidents in our childhood that do
not entirely equate to the image of idyllic sibling bliss that I may have
presented. Let’s take the Socialising Teapot Incident. Believe it or not, my brother was a very
solemn toddler who did not like people at all. As a tool to combat this, Mum
was advised to buy him a plastic tea set in order to encourage him to ‘make
tea’ for people and to ‘socialise’. The Socialising Tea Set turned out to be
the catalyst for a rather dramatic incident in our childhood history. We have
video footage of me, aged three, entering our living room mischievously clutching
the Socialising Teapot , perhaps immersed in the craze of a desperate urge to
‘make tea’ for people. This is swiftly followed by my five year old brother
charging into the room, dramatically wrestling the Socialising Teapot from my
grasp and unceremoniously knocking me into the iron radiator angrily yelling
“THAT’S MY TEAPOT!” And thus, the purpose of the Socialising Tea Set crumbled
into dust.
So there we go – in a sibling you have a friend for life, a
perpetual irritant, playmate, stress ball, emergency money fund, source of
private jokes and hilarious incidents and general companion. I am very lucky to
have a brother who I can quite happily call one of my best friends. So, Happy
Twenty-First Birthday William – here’s to the future :)
‘There is a particular luck a woman has if she has brothers.
It’s not the kind of luck that sees you breaking the casino or finding pearls
in your oysters at lunch. Instead, it’s the kind of warm steady luck that means
you never have to wait more than three minutes for a bus, or that your shoes
fit particularly well.’
- Caitlin Moran
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