My older brother used to do things to me. No, not in that “show me on the doll where he touched you,” kind of way, the sort of cruel jokes you would play on a sibling that seem way over the top at the time, but you just know you’ll remember with fondness in the coming years, as you gaze lovingly at the scars, both physical and psychological. The first thing I can remember really setting the tone for my childhood was the fishing lure. I had the top bunk; my youngest brother had the bottom, and the oldest, a.k.a. Torquemada, had his own room across the hall. While it was generally an “every man for himself” war fought on several fronts, occasionally the oldest would call a truce with one of us if he needed to accomplish a particularly devious prank. He had commissioned the malleable youngest for this endeavor.

Our summers were spent sleeping late and trying to quietly avoid yard work, and on this particular morning, I must certainly have had visions of Optimus Prime dancing in my eight-year-old head as I slept soundly, in spite of the sun blazing through the curtains. He stole into my room and placed a jelly-like fishing lure on the exposed flesh of my inner thigh, sans hook, I’m glad to report, and fastened it with a few pieces of scotch tape. Normally, if one were to awaken with a plastic worm cello-taped to your leg, you probably wouldn’t scream like you’d found a horse’s head or anything, but my brother, the devious little bastard he was, saw much more promise in the artificial leech. I was shaken into consciousness, roused by the motion and my brother’s screams of, “Wake up! You’ve got a leech on your leg!” and promptly began to scream like a little girl at a tarantula convention. In my half-asleep stupor, I began to try to kick it off with my foot, being completely unwilling to touch it with my hands, all the time huffing and squealing. I must have been kicking and jumping more than I had intended, because my gyrations promptly launched me over the retainer bar and smack on my ass, four feet below. Of course, my loving siblings are also down on the floor at this point, only they were rolling around clutching their sides and trying not to swallow their tongues.



The routine was for him to break into the bathroom as I was filling the tub, snatch me up in all my nude glory, and throw me out the front door, an act punctuated with the comically loud click of the door’s lock. Perhaps once or twice a month, I found myself naked, sitting on the front porch, waiting for my brother to get bored of my humiliation and let me back in the house, warning of the consequences should I tell our parents, shaking his fist at me, middle knuckle raised in the painful “pig knuckle,” already responsible for countless bruises on my young body.

I wasn’t the only victim of this insipid abuse, as the youngest often found himself in the crosshairs when it was decided I’d had enough. Although, I must admit a certain disappointment in the ingenuity of the torment exacted on the youngest, as he usually simply found himself locked in the dryer for a few hours, sometimes even quietly napping there. I got the A material.

The “Summer of Pain,” as I’ve come to remember it, reached a pinnacle of abuse one day as, once again, I sat waiting for the tub to fill, expecting him to burst through either of the indefensible entrances to the bathroom. As a precaution, I would keep my underwear on almost until the moment I slipped into the water, trying to cling to the little dignity I had left. As expected he opened the door, swatted away my feeble attempts at self-defense, lifted me under his arm, and made way to the front door. This time, however, he continued into the yard and around to the back. A sense of dread began to build, and I knew there was something particularly devious in mind for me, causing me to fight even harder, but to no avail. As we turned the corner, I saw, near a decaying pile of lumber and the remnants of our father’s failed attempts at gardening, a crudely fashioned cross made from desiccated pieces of wood. Certainly, this did not bode well, but I was so perplexed, and fatigued from my previous escape attempts, I could not raise a finger in my own defense. I was roughly placed against the cross and brutally lashed there with nylon rope around my ankles, wrists and neck. He double checked the bindings, smiled at me evilly, and returned to the house with a spring in his hoof.

There I was, stiffly tied to a splintery cross, clad only my BVDs, in the middle of the Louisiana June. It sucked. It sucked a lot.

I was abandoned there for, as best I can remember, close to three hours. The uniquely flat landscape of Louisiana allows one to see for miles on a clear day, and as soon as my brother saw our mother’s car returning home, he exploded out of the back door and sprinted the distance to my pre-teen Golgotha, snatched me under his arm, sprinted back into the house, and dumped me into a tub of freezing cold water.

To this day, I can’t imagine why he did any of that stuff. Even when I ask him, I never get anything other than “I don’t know,” or “It seemed like it would be fun.” That’s good enough for me, though. I don’t carry any permanent scars, except for a few from the chicken pox he gave me; I have yet to prove that was intentional. I do, however, have this wealth of memories, most involving me being semi-naked in the front lawn or baking under the midday sun like that guy in Shogun when the Jappos bury him up to his neck and let the ants pick at him for a few days.

I got him back once, though. I don’t remember the circumstances well, but I was just getting out of the tub, with a towel wrapped around me. Somehow I managed to corner him, drop the towel and urinate all over him. He still claims that was worse than anything he ever did to me.

You be the judge.