You're the Closest Thing to a Brother I've Got

“You’re the closest thing to a brother I’ve got.” These words got me in way over my head many times. Jamie, my brother was the middle child and only boy. He was four years younger than our older sister and three years older than me. I don’t know why he decided that I came closer to being a brother than Andrea. Did one year really make that much difference? Was it the fact that although she is the older sister, I have most always been the big sister? Or was it because while we were young, Andrea was way too responsible and prissy to play? I really don’t know why I was chosen, but I’m so glad I was.
Whenever Jamie was minus a “real boy” playmate, I always knew what was coming. He would inevitably think of some crazy game that he wanted to play and in attempt to talk me into this entirely macho fun, he would always say “Please, Catherine, you’re the closest thing to a brother I’ve got!” Oh the guilt! It worked on me every time – still does! Filling the shoes of the brother Jamie never had turned out to be quite an adventure that would last throughout the years of our childhood and into adulthood; until his adulthood was cut tragically short.
One of the games that always required the magic words was pillow fight. I hated to pillow fight with him, because of course, since I wasn’t actually a tough brother, he always won. Come to think of it, maybe this is why he picked me, I was sure to lose. Our favorite “brother” game, and one we invented ourselves, was Beat the Record. This game involved Jamie laying on the floor on his back and holding me straight in the air – his feet on my stomach and holding my hands. We would count how many seconds we could maintain this “airplane like” position and then do it all over again. Each time hoping to beat our previous record, hence the name. Brilliant huh?
Playing the role of Jamie’s “brother” was definitely one of the high points of my childhood. Although I protested loudly, secretly, I did not mind playing Iris the Dispatcher to his Sonny the Tractor and Trailer Driver. I must admit I rather enjoyed the times that we turned our bicycles upside down in the yard and spun mud off of the tires to see how far it would fly. This game, we called hot-dog stand! Go Figure?! I never said our games had good names, just that they were fun.
My claim to fame with my children, who are all avid dirt-bike riders, is the fact that I had a yellow Yamaha 80 dirt-bike, handed down from Jamie, when I was a little girl. They cannot imagine this when I struggle to help them start their own bikes. When I watch my kids ride lap after tedious lap, around our back-yard, I can’t help but think of the lazy days of summers past when Tom , Jamie and I would make similar laps around my childhood backyard. Even before Jamie got a new dirt-bike leaving the 80 for me, one of the boys always let me hitch a ride with them. We wore a trail in the yard very similar to the path in my current backyard.
Wrestling was another favorite brother game of Jamie and mine. This is a game where he seriously under-estimated me. Like I said, I was the “big” sister, so I had some serious wrestling moves. A life-long friend of ours, who participated in some of these matches and refereed others, still attests to this fact. I may have been a bad pillow fighter, but I was a pretty good wrestler.
Not all of the games Jamie guilted me into were with good intentions. There was the day that he had me hide beneath a desk covered with blankets for most of the afternoon under the pretense of protecting me from the prisoner who had escaped. I wish I had known while I was sitting, smothering, under that desk that there was not a prison within 50 miles of us. Once, Jamie asked me to help him break a pony he acquired from somewhere. Like any “good brother” would do, I obediently mounted the bare back of an untrained horse. What seemed like hours of sailing through the air later, I landed, in a big way, on the ground. I didn’t fall for that one twice. There were also the times, too numerous to count, that he told me I was adopted; specifically selected by our parents from a C.A.R.E. commercial. I probably should have been on to this one too, because after all, if they were going to adopt, certainly they would have adopted a brother for Jamie to play with.
Growing up, I played trucks as much as I played dolls. I learned to hike a football instead of twirl a baton. I made mud pies and had tea parties, played with Barbies and built club-houses, learned to sew and learned to spit; and am a better person for having done all of them. There is not one thing I would change about growing up as Jamie’s little sister, because after all, I was the closest thing to a brother he had.