Family Memories: The Greatest Team

When I was growing up, my brother Brian and I were a pretty great team. Despite an eight year difference in age, we always had many adventures usually restricted to around the house or neighborhood.

Instead of a picture of Brian and me at that age, I will instead share with you a cartoon image of how I remember us: Calvin and Hobbes may have been inseparable, but if Bill Watterson had known Brian and me, he would have made it Hobbes and Susie!

 

So the memory begins.

In our living room we had two bookshelves, roughly 6.5 feet high, next to each other in a corner. Since they were not designed for a corner they were only touching at one point, so instead of overlapping where one would be overtaking the other, they only met at this point to where a perfect square of empty space was formed in the corner. This is where the memory begins.

I remember Brian (around 12 years old and already nearly 6 feet), standing on a chair, hoisting me up and lowering me down into that perfect square of empty space. We had both agreed that I would fit perfectly so there was no reason for us NOT to go on with our plan. To use the word “plan” in this story is misleading as there was no plan, just an idea that I would fit into that space and that he would hoist me in and then back out. But of course, any of you that have siblings know that there’s an agreed upon understanding that my brother would now pretend to leave me in that space. The actual events of him leaving me for a moment is muddled and I could be remembering it wrong but I truly remember a feeling of complete contentment and trust that he would come back and “rescue” me from that “pit”, which he did.

It’s such a wonderfully simple, yet silly memory of my playtime with Brian as we were growing up. We were constantly thinking of things to do and it never occured to us to have it involve a TV or video game. My childhood was filled with imagination and adventure because of Brian!

Thanks, Brian! I love you!