Girls can to be Tarzan!!! Er,, maybe not....

My brother is 21 months older than me. What does this mean? This means he was always waaaay cooler than me. Growing up we had a lot of fun catching animals and beating on each other. Oh the good times. He broke my arm, I hit him with a stilt.

"Oh that sounds terrible!!" you say. Well let me explain....

I was the proverbial pain in the ass sister. I was always there disturbing his natural instinct to get away from me. When I was about 6 my brother was playing Tarzan. Tarzan is cool even to a girl. He was jumping off our front porch while making the famous:

"AAHhh-eeee-Aahhhh-eeeee-Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

... scream of forests lore and beating his chest showing dominance over animal and human species alike. I didn't know it then, but there was some rule that girls could not be Tarzan. As I tried, the "REAL" Tarzan's dominance over his younger sibling verbally came out. This pissed off the extremely clumsy pseudo Tarzan girl and she would show HIM who COULD or COULD NOT be Tarzan!!

My jump would be faster, farther and higher. My chest would be beaten with so much force the ground would shake and the ants would gather together and carry me anywhere I needed to go for a year. MY "AAhh-eeeee- Aahhhheeeeeee-Aaaahhhhhhhhh" would be so loud, the monkeys, in where ever the hell they live, would start knitting a dresser full of animal print sarongs for me. The lions would forge my crown, all patiently awaiting my return to the jungle. I am not sure how it happened but somewhere between the porch stoop railing, air and ground, I got jilted on my Grand Tarzan flight. My Tarzan battle cry suffered, coming out as a screechy:

"AAAAHHHH-EEEEE-OOoohhhhhhh..crap....thump"
(sobbing)

My arm bone was the casualty of the lesson that girls made sub-par Tarzans.

At the hospital in MY moment of attention, my brother sat BETWEEN a group of connected hospital chairs. This worked until he had to get out and his ass was stuck and needed to be "surgically" removed. I sat in a chair laughing at him, but a little miffed that all the cute EMT's were fussing over HIM when a piece of my frame core had been broken and certainly one handsome hero would have fell in love with me to live happily ever after.blah.blah.blah

Hmmmmpf. Way to soil my fairy tale ending, JJ!!

I guess looking back it was me that broke my arm then wasn't it? But I did hit him with a stilt because he could run around the yard on MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT STILTS on the first try and I could not walk on them at all barely stand on them after weeks of trying and injury.

BUT, there was the great baton accident of 1978. (you don't wanna hear about that).

I guess we trump out on childhood accidents after all. Good to know.

We had the normal moments of stupidity flashes of brilliance.

Like naming a puppet "Nobody" so that he could do bad things and we could say: "Nobody did it!!"

Or the way he "let" me find out that if I go down the alphabet, not a lot of words "rhyme" with "duck" but, one word in particular makes parents run with soap towards you.

And, if he wanted my candy all he had to do is play "Shetley" the dog with me and I would happily put it in a bowl for him.

Coincidentally, if I shortened the name "Shetley" in anger of the dog's bad behavior, it too sounds like a word that makes parents run with soap towards you. I wonder if that was also lovingly brother orchestrated.

But there were a many times.... Eeeeeeeep!!!

Like the day we found out that even if you put silly putty on a hot bare light bulb for hours, it will not glow any brighter. It will however, change its molecular structure and make a little girl scream:

"It's BUUUURRRRNNNNING,, it's BUUUUURRRRRNNNNNING!!!!" whilst running down the hall with unintentional "jazz hands".

And also, putting saltine crackers, sandwiched with sliced cheese, in a toaster, really does not come out as a great "after school" snack. It does however, make a very tedious "after school" lecture in safety and intelligence and strict punishment consequences while simultaneously stinking up the house.

We were bestest pals for the most part, except for when his friends were around, or at the mall, or out to eat, or generally any public appearance (laughing).

I always knew he would do what he wanted to do in life, which was be around animals, specifically amphibians and reptiles. One time as he was working at an animal park in front of a "snake hut", holding a huge snake. Kids were touching the snake and asking questions, he was sweetly filling them in on all the info about the species.

A little boy came up and was caught in awe of the creature in front of him. His parents scooted him up and he reluctantly complied, getting very close to the snake.

"You can touch him!" they said, further accentuating the child's wildlife experience.

The boy looked nervous but held his little hand out slowly in the direction of the snake. His hand then bypassed the snake entirely and touched my brother's arm instead before jumping back to the safety of his parents.

Everyone is in awe of my brother. I love you JJ!!!