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My two brothers, Tom and Alan, are cut from an entirely different mold than I am. Besides our discernible facial features, you’d never guess that we came from the same lineage.
When we were young, my brothers and I had an aloof relationship. My older brother Tom was bigger and stronger than me. My younger brother, Alan, on the other hand, was the coddled and cuddled “baby” of the family. Being the middle boy was often difficult. I could neither compete with Tom’s rugged masculine toughness, nor come close to Alan’s charismatic charm and adorable allure.
Growing up, I felt like the odd-one-out in our brotherly trio.
As a somewhat sensitive, diffident, and imaginative kid who often existed in a fictitious world of words and wondrous characters that inhabited my reading, story writing, or make-believe superhero adventures, I was the antithesis of my brothers, who hung out together engaging in typical “boy” behaviors and activities: building, hunting, breaking, pillaging.
Both Tom and Alan occasionally worked with my grandfather, who graciously bestowed upon them the notorious nicknames “Tom Cat” and “Alley Cat.” Although he sometimes called me “Jim Cat,” he preferred “Jiminy Cricket” (the comical, congenial gentlemen grasshopper who served as Pinocchio’s conscience), which just didn’t have the same audacious nuance as my brothers’ appropriate appellations.
In our adolescent years, my brothers’ carousing and infamous escapades at keg parties became legendary, while I worked arduously at my academics—writing articles for the school newspaper, publishing poems in the literary magazine, and gaining some notable notoriety as a local musician. I continued along my literary and musical paths and furthered my education, while they opted for the rough road of experience and hands-on labor.
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Eventually, over the years, a new respectful relationship emerged between my brothers and me. We slowly grew beyond the froth of our formative years, forming a close brotherly bond through our familiar kinship.
Occasionally, instances arise where we revert back to the dynamics of our childhood. When my wife and I wanted a deck built as an outside play area for our five children, I did what was necessary to get the job done. I called my two brothers.
Tom, showing up clad in his work vest and utility belt chock full of tools and carpentry accouterments, became the obvious general foreman. Alan, who also understands the intricacies of construction, assumed the position of Tom’s number one, second in command.
It was not discussed, but I am relegated to doing subordinate grunt work (carrying boards) and being paltry gofer (fetching tools and getting coffees), for though I’m an educator with various academic credentials and degrees, I cannot put two boards together to save my soul.
As the project gets underway, I know I’m way out of my league and have to somehow assert myself as a valuable and viable presence to gain some sense of deference. Unfortunately, my insecurity fosters my tendency to ask tedious questions while they diligently work. When my loquacious and inquisitive manner becomes a nuisance, they do anything they can to keep me occupied, distracted, and out-of-the-way.
“Hey!” Tom calls out over the din of the compressor powering his massive nail gun, catching me scribbling down notes. “Whatta ya doin’?” he rhetorically asks, and then (only half-kidding) commands, “Get back to work!” I pocket my notepad and scamper back over to their work area.
I can’t fully fathom what my brothers do. They speak in a foreign dialect, a carpenter’s communiqué of garbled English and slang. At one point, Alan calls over to Tom, “I need a seven-footer, a twelve ain’t gonna work here.”
I know enough not to step over the bounds of my station to correct their grammar or phrasings, as they constantly turn adjectives into nouns before my ears. They communicate through measurements, cuts, angles, and numbers—a language unfamiliar to my world of words.
As Tom inspects a board, I inquire, “What’s this?” pointing to a spot with rough jagged texture. “Oh, that’s just planer-snipe, where the planer chattered on the board,” my brother Tom explains. I am amused at the way they seem to invent terminology and imagery words out of thin air.
“How many you got left?” Tom asks Alan, who replies, “I got these here and two more in the hopper.”
In the hopper… I quietly wonder to myself, making a note to Google the etymology of the word later.
In order to fit in, I not only have to keep my vocabulary sparse and not get too verbose, I must occasionally cuss, use jargon, slur my words a bit, and periodically spit and scratch if I want to be accepted into their ranks.
Over coffee, we engage in typical “guy talk,” comical childhood memories, the enigma of women, and each other’s various leisurely activities and interests. My wife periodically interrupts our male bonding to toss barbs at me, pertaining to my pathetic, desperate attempts to evoke my inner tough guy. It doesn’t help that I am bundled up against the elements, wearing thick winter gloves, a scarf, and a black beanie, while they work in their bare, callous, laborer’s hands.
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I eventually hammer out all these thoughts buzzing around the clandestine literary world in my mind—a creative, limitless, and subjective place, which stands in sharp contrast to the objective, concrete, physical world in which they work.
While I busy myself with literary structure, my brothers literally build structures; while they construct the deck, I continually construct the story of the experience.
Though I am nothing like my two brothers in manner, form, or personality, I have come to appreciate our differences, their amazing talents, and everything they’ve done for me.
Maybe someday, in my own unique special way, I will be able to reciprocate, perhaps immortalizing them on the page in a passage of prose such as this.
—
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