Raging Bro

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

I was about six years old when my brother married.

They were both 18 and going to college. Every penny they earned went to higher education so neither they nor their parents could afford an apartment for the young couple. Married dorm rooms were virtually unheard of. Co-ed dorms were just coming into vogue, but no “decent” girl lived in one of those. I still don’t know why that didn’t apply to the guys.

When they were married, my mother tried to explain the changes relating to my life. She told me that I hadn’t lost my brother; I’d gained a new sister. Since I didn’t get along with the old one, this was a fresh chance.

My parents had a large home with a full sized basement. They furnished this downstairs area into an apartment for the young couple to live rent-free, though the commute to school was far. Still, it beat paying rent.

One day when everyone was home – it must have been a weekend, I bragged to the little girl next door that I had a brand new sister.

Being no fool, she didn’t believe me, as she’d recently seen my mother who showed no signs of pregnancy. When I tried to explain that my brand new sister was 12 years older than I, she called my bluff.

I set out to prove it to her.

The basement had window wells. These were little tiny windows that leaked under piled snow, were too small for any sort of decent illumination, and were too high inside the basement to reach. Why they were ever put there is a mystery, unless it was for this particular day in the life of a curious six-year-old.

I knew that looking into someone’s bedroom was wrong. I wasn’t sure why, but it was definitely wrong. But there certainly didn’t seem to be any issue looking into someone’s kitchen. I did that all the time; our huge upstairs kitchen window looked out into the back yard. I would wave at my mother as she washed dishes just to see soap bubbles fly as she waved back.

Newlyweds do not understand this convention. Looking down into their kitchen, I showed my neighbor my new sister; both of us gazing through the tiny window. My brother must have had something wrong, because he was holding his robe open while she was sitting on a chair in front of him. I couldn’t see the problem because of the way he held the robe, but it must have hurt, because she leaned in to kiss it and make it better..

I was naturally concerned for my bother’s well being.

Then he saw me. From the expression on his face, I became far more concerned for my own well being.

“Stay there!” he yelled at me through the thick glass and flew out of the kitchen.

Yeah, right!

I may have only been six, but I knew better than to stand and wait for him to come and pummel me.

Here was the problem: the door into the house was at one end of a hallway. The door to basement was at the other. My father was in the den watching TV (I hoped), but the den door was right next to the basement door.

I pelted inside, abandoning my neighbor in a puff of dust and pumped my little legs down the hallway. As I got neared the other end, I could hear my brother’s footsteps pounding on the stairs – he even ran angry.

I kept praying that dad was still in the den, and hadn’t gone for a snack. If he had, I would be trapped in a room with no exit and an enraged 18 year-old brother.

He was there! Dad was sitting on the couch, watching wrestling. As I skidded around the corner of the door jam into the den, I could hear the basement door crashing open immediately behind me. I leap the distance of the width of the den, landing on the couch next to my father. He looked down at me in pure shock as a six-year-old missile landed almost on his lap. I looked up at him with big, wide-open eyes and in my best little happy voice I said, “I love you daddy!”

He didn’t have time to reply before my brother burst into the room and pointed at me “COME HERE!” he yelled.

Yeah, right!

I shook my head and tried to crawl into my father’s hip pocket.

“COME HERE!” my brother bellowed.

“What in the world did he do?” my father asked, shocked a second time in less than a minute.

“He…HE…” my brother choked on the answer. He couldn’t bring himself to describe what it was I had done.

Between running up stairs in a full wrath and the embarrassment of trying NOT to explain to his father what I caught him doing, my brother’s face turned so red I though it was going to blow off.

He left the room, still fuming and sputtering, growling vague but dire threats to me as he left. My father asked me what I had done and I told him the entire story, as I have here.

He asked me what it was they were doing in the kitchen, I said I didn’t know, but she was sitting in front of him as he held his robe open. I said I thought maybe she was looking at an owie.

I was lectured and scolded for looking into windows.

It was a lesson I took to heart, probably more so because I have never before or since heard anyone who could give a severe and strict reprimand while laughing.