My Younger, Older Brother

People wonder how I could get to be this big, this tall, this old, and still have this Pollyanna personality. One look at my confused childhood might clear up that mystery and explain how my alter-ego took the form of a mythical crayon.

I led a deprived childhood. There were no girls in my neighborhood.

My siblings were both brothers. They were bigger than me. They were taller and older, and always would be. Though they were born 15 months apart, they are twins in their minds and twins in their souls. They are two sides of one coin. Where one lets off, the other one starts. Somehow they managed to take all of the traits that a person might be and divide them between them in equal parts. So I’ve one brother who’s a thinker, a financial wizard who spends his time watching and analyzing, and a second who’s a dazzler, the life of the party who should have been a movie-star politician.

It didn’t leave much room for little girl to fit in. But that wasn’t what steered me to a life of skipping down the road cheerfully. I was still an infant, or so I’m told, when he corrupted me.

My younger, older brother trained me to a whistle.

It was a rare and special whistle—like the boy who made it. He would stand by my crib and whistle to get me to look at him. I guess he never stopped doing it, and soon it became my name.

Through the years if my brother wanted me, he would whistle and I’d come running.

“Hey kid, if you do the dishes,” he’d say. “There’s $500 extra in the next game of Monopoly.”

And sure enough weeks later when the next game rolled around, the money would be there. Of course, fifteen minutes after I got my $500, I’d be bankrupt and handing him that and the rest of my cash. I never acquired a taste for the game. It’s not good to play board games against someone who is always going to be bigger, taller, and older than you.

On Christmas, when I was seven, I watched for an hour while he played with the coolest train I’d ever seen. He whistled to get my attention. Then he offered a treat if I’d fetch some water. I complied eagerly.

“Can I play with the train?” I asked mustering what courage I could find.

“Sure kid, it’s yours,” he replied mischievously.

I never won. He was bigger, taller, and older than me.

Once I thought I had him. It was during a game of cops and robbers. Being smaller I found a hiding place where he wouldn’t think to look for me. I hid in my place with a smile. He whistled. I came. Then he shot me.

By age ten I was determined to break myself of the habit of answering that whistle. It was harder than I had figured. I would walk 20 paces before I realized I was doing it. Pavlov’s dogs had nothing on me. Even now if I hear something mildly close to it, I start and then look in that direction. A part of me will always think that my name is a Huck Finn sort of whistle. It's kind of a fun memory. It ties us together—me and my younger, older brother.

To this day if you ask him about it, he’ll smile and say he thought of me more as a pet than as his little sister.

So you see when I act like an overgrown puppy, I come by it honestly.

If you tire of it, thank my younger, older brother. He was bigger, taller, and older than me (and always will be).

My older, older brother says I’m his older sister, but that’s a different tale altogether.

—me strauss Letting me be