Mike is my older brother, and we're polar opposites. I'm a more reserved, and private person. My brother Mike is a smooth talker and a ladies' man, real life of the party-type. He's also a more restless soul than I am.
Ever since we were kids he has been a schemer and a hustler (I say it in the most loving way). I can remember when we were pre-teens, how he used to be the master of bartering. When he was 13 he traded an air rifle, some baseball cards, and a dollar bill for a Chevette. Yeah, a car. The damn thing never started though, and we ended up towing it to the scrap yard and getting about $50 for it. That was typical of my older bro.
I should also mention that me and my older brother have different fathers. My mother met Mike's dad in high school, and were sweethearts who eventually got married for one hot minute. Shortly, after the birth of my brother they split and my mom met my dad, who she continued the marriage, kid, divorce pattern with. My mother never got married again after my father, but she did have more children (my three younger sisters, and one younger brother).
Now, when Mike and I were just toddlers up until we were school age, we were inseparable. In fact, my brother would tell neighborhood bullies he was going to beat them up, and when they would call his bluff he would yell,"Get 'em, Booger!", which was the moniker bestowed upon me by my older brother to who I would respond,"Okay, Mikey!" and then chase after the boy who was usually a few years older than me. But then a strange thing happened. Mike's dad came back into the picture with a little money, and offering a supposedly better life for my brother if he went to live with him. My mother relented and I didn't see Mike for about five years. It was a sad time for me (I remember crying in my bed the night he left, with his quilt in my bed which still smelled like him).
Five years later, however, my brother was returned to me. I still don't remember why his father brought him back to us, but I believe it had something to do with Mike getting too hard for his father to handle, or wanting to handle. I knew things were gonna be a little different upon Mike's return when I said,"Hi, Mikey," to which he responded,"My names not Mikey, it's Mike... and if you call me Mikey I'll kill you,"
It seemed Mike had gained some anger in his absence, and I was going to experience it's explosive capabilities.
We got along again at first, until school started. My mom made us sit together on the bus, which pissed Mike off to no end. "He's your brother, and you're gonna look out for him," my mom would tell him. He would then tell me not to embarrass him on the bus. It seems that my older brother was scared of looking uncool with me tagging along. And since he wasn't shy about telling me how much I sucked, I decided that our new seating arrangement was the perfect time to exact some revenge. I went out of my way to groan like a retard and make stupid faces on the bus every morning. I even went so far as to sing in a William Hung-like voice that "Mike is my brother".
From then on, it was open warfare between my older and brother and myself from those elementary school bus trips, all the way through the end of middle school. It would have lasted longer than that I'm sure if my brother's criminal behavior hadn't split us up.
So, for the next few years we fought like brothers (he would take me to play Hide and Seek in the woods and go home while I was hding instead of looking, and I would pay his friends five dollars to hold him down while I punched him in the stomach). It was an interesting time. Once we were in middle school, however, we barely saw each other. He was hanging out with high school kids and doing God knows what. We were still fighting when we saw each other though. I would break all of his cigarettes in half and neatly stuff them back in the box since he couldn't tell mom I broke his smokes, and he would take highliter markers to my rare and valuble comic books (you dirty fucker!)
Eventually, the cops came looking for him after he hadn't been home in three days. They searched the home for him, and informed our mother he was wanted in connection with an armed robbery. A few days later they caught up with him in Pennsylvania and brought him back to Maryland for trial (he told me he was eating cereal in his underwear when the cops busted in). Also funny to me was how the newspaper said "21 year old robs convenience store" when at the time my brother Mike was only 14. He was 6'3" and had a voice like Rusty Nail in Joyride, but he was 14 none the less.
He also knew the woman running the cash register that night too. It was one of our friends' mother. Mike told me he walked in the store, pulled out the gun, and said,"Give me all your money," before realizing he was robbing Eddie Painter's mom. He paused in shock for a moment and then said,"I said gimme the fuckin' money, bitch," to which she finally responded and opened the register. My brother laughs everytime he tells that story. Sorry Mrs. Painter.
While in his holding cell, he still had a big smile on his face while my mother cried at the site of her oldest child in shackles and cuffs. "Don't worry, mom. It's no big deal," he said to her like he was just being called into the Principal's office. It took five months for my brother's trial to come up, and afterward he was sentenced to 90 days for armed robbery. In total, he spent only eight months locked up. Even while serving his time he seemed unbreakable in his happiness. His only complaint in his phone calls was that he had to wear deck shoes as prison issue and that the name of the place was all over his clothes.
He got lucky. He got real lucky, because they changed the law just days after his sentencing so juvenile offenders would be tried as adults in the future. He also managed to graduate early from high school while incarcerated, which was funny because before his criminal career he had managed to fail seventh and eight grade.
Jail time also seemed to soften him a bit. When he got out, he made a point to apologize to me for the way he treated me when we were growing up and the names he used to call me. Since then, he's held a million jobs, jumping from place to place. Nowadays, he lives in Florida about five hours from me, and runs his own water softener business, and making good money. He also has a daughter which is the reason he gets up every day. We've learned to be closer to each other in recent times and care about each other very much.
My sister Ashley had an equally wild ride, but I'll cover that another time.
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