Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

My Brother Steve

My wife she is a school principal and I spend plenty of time listening to stories that happen over the course of her day. She told me this story today that I found relatable, funny and a little bit sad. She had a student who got in trouble for aggressively chasing another student. He was a nervous third grader and when asked what happened out there on the playground he answered with unshakable reasoning. 

The boy’s explanation was that he accidently started to run. 

My wife asked him how exactly that happened, but he could not reproduce it. Still, I love his imagination and storytelling ability.

This story took me back to a place many years ago when my brain devopment was still in the waxing almost half moon phase. Any clouds could obscure that vision. 

It was a night without baseball. There were no kids around to play baseball. In Northmont, neighborhood kids played all day long. For some reason, I was back home playing in the backyard. It was a Sunday and we just came home from somewhere in a large car where my parents smoked silently in the front seat. We ventured out that morning and I felt we could have been at church. It could have been that I needed to change out of my clothes. I do not know why. It may have been church. What we remember and what we forget, it is a capricious thing. There is no method to the madness that I know of. These little incidents stick in our mind for a long time. We do not talk about them. Maybe they do not need talking about. Yet they make sense years later. 

It was me and my younger brother Steve alone in the backyard that day. We got along well as kids, and he was always up for an adventure. It is worth noting, we also had a duck named Georgie, who was out in the yard wreaking havoc with us. He doesn’t come in the story all that much, until I play it back in mybhead. Who knows how much is true, fifty years later. Georgie was in the background doing duck things and imprinting behind us.

I preferred to be playing baseball. It was a Sunday and our mother was making shepherds pie. Our dad was at the bar down the street. That is the story for another day. If I could not be playing baseball or box hockey, I preferred to be in my room alone reading a book. Still here I was with my brother Steve, leftto our imaginations.

I do not know where we produced this idea as I became traumatized, a few years later, for catching a fish and watching its life end prematurely. Still, we decided to go hunt birds. Death has always terrified me, but my brother must have been persuasive. Possibly, I was not at that stage yet. We reasoned that we could have birds for dinner. It sure beat shepherds’ pie.Steve and I had a meeting, next to the ashcan in the alley, to discuss plans on how we were going to get some birds. We realized the urgency of the situation. We did not want to go back in the house, fearing our parents would want us to do something. We decided we needed someplace to go to the bathroom in the yard. We did not want to go back in the house and take in the salty aroma of the shepherds’ pie cooking in the oven and who knows what mood dad would have. We were not even planning to go in to have dinner. We were going to get some birds.

We decided the best way to get some birds would be to throw rocks at them. My brother and I were great at throwing. We did build a slingshot but could not find any elastic bands. I think we did not know how a slingshot worked. We threw the baseball around all the time, so we believed ourselves capable. We gathered rocks from our mother’s flower garden that she set aside earlier in the day. Georgie the Duck ate the worms that fell off the rocks. 

Somehow, a shovel appeared. I do not know how it got there. I imagine it was sitting next to our mothers’ gladiolas. Then I remembered we helped our dad dig worms for fishing the previous evening. Now I remember we were fishing that morning. In the far corner of the yard, we dug a hole that would serve as a toilet. We were practiced hole diggers due to our experience as nighttime worm diggers. We figured we could use it on another day as well.

We went birding for possibly twenty minutes. I did not have the heart to throw a rock at a bird. I did practice picking out targets in the alleyway. I was a decent shot. I did hit the intended apple on Mrs. Byers apple tree. My brother said he was different. I do not think we even saw a bird. It was mid afternoon and there were not too many birds within our vision. The birds were resting or our plan was far too obvious. They were on to five-year-olds with rock throwing schemes.

I remember walking back into the yard completely defeated. Well at least it looked that way. Underneath I was secretly happy we did not throw rocks at a bird. I closed the gate to the backyard and heard a certain clicking sound. Naturally, Georgie greeted us upon our return. This was a signal to our parents. Yes, we were back home after a long adventure, and I desperately had to go to the bathroom.

It is right there, I remembered we just built a toilet in the backyard. We knew dinner would be ready soon, and I did notwant to walk past my parents to go to the bathroom. My shoes were muddy. Using my less than fully developed brain, I did the next logical thing. I walked over to the toilet we built in the yard, and I started tinkling into the hole we dug out previously. I stood facing the side of the garage and stared into the near distance. It felt so good. I zipped up my pants and started heading towards the hose to wash my hands. I also wanted a drink of water and hose water is simply the best. I let the water flow down my chest. It felt tremendous.

My mother stopped me right next to the rose bushes. She grabbed me sternly by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes with steely determination. She noticed my zipper still down. 

“What were you doing?”

“We went hunting birds.”

I said to her with a hint of flippancy. At that age I was afraid of my parents. I usually confessed quickly if I had done something wrong. I occasionally confessed for crimes my brother committed just to get the drama over with. I took the path of least resistance and told the truth.

“No, I was asking what you were doing there in the corner of the yard.” She looked uneasy and distracted and in retrospect shepherds pie was a casserole dish incapable of catching fire. I did not seem like me pissing in the yard was our biggest issue of the day. But apparently it was. I do not remember the exact words of that tirade, yet this a teaching moment. “Thou shall not piss in the yard,” and she meant every syllable of that. 

At this point, my dad stumbled into the conversation. I do notremember exactly where my brother Steve was at the time. My mother started going into a tirade about her son ‘s pissing in the yard. 

My dad drinks a lot of beer. I knew he had done it before. He was not exactly the handy type, and he seemed mildly impressed that we put a toilet in the yard. He asked us if we got any birds. Our mother started dead heading the rose bushes that sat next to us. 

It was starting to get dark. I remember hearing the roar of the highway a few blocks away, and then I heard the evening trainpassing in the east. Our father switched on the Phillies game on the transistor radio. We couldn’t hear it all that clearly as it cracked because of approaching thunderstorms. Then the lightning bugs came out nobody seemed to care that we were hunting bird with the rocks. As for the other crime I did not have a pot to piss in. I was guilty as hell and lasted about a half day into being grounded. Our parents got sick of us and would eventually let us back again into the wild.