Oh Brother

Over the past few months, I’ve been forced to spend some quality time with my younger brother. How do you force two people in their twenties to hang out? Well, he had season tickets to the Mariners. Thus, I was forced to spend time with him in order to use him for the tickets on occasion.

A weird thing happened this summer though as I spent more time than usual hanging out with my brother. Turns out, I actually like the guy. Yeah, it came as a shock to me too. I’ve never not gotten along with him, even growing up we never really fought with each other. It probably helps that despite our very different personalities, we enjoy doing the same things. However, this was the first summer where it actually hit me that if we weren’t related, this is a guy I would be friends with.

This summer isn’t the first time we’ve ever spent quality time together. A couple years ago, my family found out that Rob would have to serve in the Army over in Kuwait for 9-12 months. So he and I went on a ski trip to Utah the winter before he left. While we had a good time skiing together, I did have to whack him multiple times with my ski pole to get him to pull his head out. In my defense, the kid was 22 at the time. All 22 year old boys are dumb as a box of rocks. Any girl will tell you that.

Flash forward a few years and now we get along well enough to see each other much more frequently. It does help that he lives in Seattle now instead of being stationed in Kuwait or Alabama, but I think it’s more than that. Somewhere along the way, he grew up and I relaxed. And now he has Mariner tickets.

And despite my having to sleep on his couch if I go up to Seattle, the kid cooks a good breakfast in the morning. And its nice to have a brother who will translate a boys point of view, since to a girl they may as well be speaking in Cumbric (it’s a dead language, I totally wikied it). Mostly it’s nice to have someone to hang out with that enjoys doing the same things. Especially if you only want to hit them with a ski pole occasionally. Because hey, it’s still my brother.