Part Three

 

Being Dad in the

Peer Years

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

Being a Dad That Deals with Sibling Issues

 

Most brothers are not the kindest of individuals to one another.  I’ve heard of brothers that physically beat each other up even into adulthood, be it as it may.  Other brothers put each other down incessantly.  Some brothers compete with each other fiercely in everything.  My brother and I were no exceptions to this common trait among brothers.

One time my brother, John, was so angry with me that he took a kitchen knife and carved my name into the Plexiglas door on our microwave.  He apparently thought that Mom and Dad would read the huge D-A-V-I-D in the door and I would get into big trouble.  Needless to say that one backfired in a matter of minutes once they figured out I hadn’t done it.  If that wasn’t bad enough, another time he took a knife and started to come after ME with it!  Before you think this was all one sided—I had my share of guilty times too.  Older brothers like me are just a little smarter about the kinds of ways to get at the younger ones.  Sometimes I would make faces at him when he was getting in trouble, which caused him to nearly blow his stack and just get in deeper trouble.  My favorite trick was to get really close to him, perhaps even draping a brotherly love arm over his shoulder, and to whisper to him, “you’re the biggest baby I’ve ever seen” and then I would run away, pushing chairs in his pursuant path and locking doors behind me.  But by far our most epic battles occurred in the back seat of our oft-traveling father’s car.

 

Back-Seat Brawls

Most kids tell stories of their Dads warning to pull over the car if they don’t stop acting out.  We pushed things to the limit so much that I remember several times that Dad actually did pull over and remove his belt on the interstate.  Having different sides as our “turf” was always the proscribed remedy by our mother.  She would pull the center seat-belt across the bench seat and that was deemed the sibling de-militarized zone.  You couldn’t cross that line because that was the boundary.  Of course, just like a wartime DMZ that line became the source of our squabbles from then on.  I would place a hand across the line in a noticeable and flaunting way, and then my brother would push a shoe or a belt buckle hard into my hand and then claim he was safe because the violent incident took place on what was his side.  Often he would dangle a hand over my trying-to-sleep face and say in a stupid voice, “I’m <s