Grounded For Life Continues ~ Chapter 3

My brother and I were like any other siblings growing up we share a very strong love to hate one another relationship. My brother is actually one of the reasons I truly hate baseball to date. Saturdays were spent with every TV on with a different baseball game on each TV. He collected baseball cards so whatever teams were playing he would pull that team out of his collection and arrange them in alphabetical order according to that weekend’s line up. While my brother was enjoying his favorite pass time I had to scrub baseboards with ammonia, dust, vacuum, fold laundry every teenage girls Saturday nightmare.

Well there was one Saturday that I was able to formulate an unexpected “get back” at my older brother. Considering I always would gripe moan and complain that he didn’t have to do anything and that he was the “favored” child in the family. On this particular Saturday I was in a more than usually bad mood, my brother was in his little piece of heaven when “nature called” him to the back of the house. I saw my chance of a wee bit of revenge.

Mama was at the kitchen sink washing dishes. My daddy had worked the night before and had just woken up. He was in the bedroom getting cleaned up. The baseball games were coming to a close and my brother had just gotten through placing his cards that he had worked all day on back in their safe boxes before going on his nature call.

I happened to walk in the den, noticed mama not paying me any attention, my brother nowhere in sight and it hit me “well big brother it is pay back time”. I turned each and every box over dumping all the cards on the floor and just to make sure that things couldn’t be put back together easily I laid down on the floor and rolled around on them making sure to mix them all up. It was then my brother walked in the den and made some awful sound of pain that caught my mama’s attention. I even rendered mama speechless.

I figured since being caught and couldn’t blame it on the dogs/cats or the ghost who obviously lived in our house, I took my leave very very quickly and locked myself in the bathroom. I figured I was safe in there but my brother had regained his senses and was livid!!! He chased me down the hall trying to rip the bathroom door off the hinges. My daddy came tearing out of his room wondering what on earth had happened.

Here is where I should probably tell you something about my brother. He is very laid back, not much bothers him, he has a very dry sense of humor and while growing up he was a bookworm. His favorite past time, outside the baseball card issue, was to read encyclopedias. Why you ask? He was a geek, boring, stick in the mud!!! He was also painfully shy. See how my coming along saved my parents from a boring mundane life? However, when my brother gets very mad, he to this date still, sputters, and talks to himself in a low tone and paces.

Well, I’m locked in the bathroom and refusing to open the door because I can hear my brother pacing outside the door, and no matter how many times my daddy asks him “What does he think he is doing?” he is so mad he can’t even begin to explain to daddy. My mama comes down the hall and tells daddy what I did. For the first time my parents actually had to fight off laughing about one of my stunts.

Of course, I’m locked in the bathroom with my ear pressed up against the door listening to any movements outside the door. My daddy demanded for me to come out in the hall and for us to put an end to this mess.

I, of course, refused because I knew as soon as I opened that door my brother would wrap his hands around my neck and choke the life right out of me. Mama and daddy finally managed to get me out of the bathroom but they had to make sure my brother was out of the house before I agreed to open the bathroom door. I mean I was a lot of things, stupid was not top on that list, my brother tried to stuff me in a dryer to prove his point so I didn’t trust him to stay calm.

This was the only time that I reacted to a pay back situation where I didn’t get punished. My parents told my brother I applied sweet justice towards him from his actions earlier and my fear for my life for sometime after that action was punishment enough for me.

Now my brother has the patience of anyone I’ve ever known in my life, so I guess I should have known I’d get paid back when I least expected it. Trust me, he came out in full power.

In our family I was considered the social butterfly and my brother the scholar so when the phone rang and it wasn’t for my parents it was for me. My brother wouldn’t even bother to blink an eye when the phone rang basically because no one wanted to talk to him. However, after the whole baseball card issue, he’d break his neck to answer the phone. If the person on the phone asked for me he’d tell them; I wasn’t home, I was grounded, or whatever excuse popped in his mind. Even on a few occasions he told the person on the phone they had the wrong number. He made sure that my social life at home in no man’s land was affected.

It didn’t take me long to figure out life was growing increasingly boring around our house, so I approached my brother, which quickly escalated into a fistfight us. Before I could get in the “final” hit mama broke us up and sent us to our rooms. Of course, he was allowed out sooner than I, and he came to my bedroom door, opened it and was doing what annoying childhood siblings do to one another. I was in there doing my hair and in a fit of rage threw my hairbrush at him.

Now keep in mind I couldn’t hit a board moving or standing still on a good day, but I was obviously in rare form, because not only did I hit him with the hairbrush, I knocked him slap out!!!

This is where my life became more miserable than one could imagine!!!

After I threw the brush I didn’t even bother to see where it landed until I heard the hard thud in the hallway. My mama heard the hard thud and came running. It was her screams that caused me to bolt out of my room to find out what was wrong only for me to trip over my brother’s limp body with the hairbrush by his head.

My mother is screaming “YOU KILLED HIM”!!! I knew this was not a good sign for my limited social life. My daddy appeared and just stood there speechless. Luckily it was at this time my brother started to awake from his limited “out cold” stage. Personally, to this date, I truly believe he did this for the “drama” affect. It worked!!!

Guess what the next words that my mama yelled, yes, you guessed it, “Insert name ~ YOU’RE GROUNDED!” Then came the lecture of how I could have really hurt him. Well, right at that moment in my life, I really wish I would have, but no, he wins in the end and I’m grounded till an unmentioned time in my life.

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