My brother has always been bigger than me. While we have not yet learned how to be friends as adults, we were normally kind to each other as kids. We fought just as brothers do. However, there was one time that we were fighting (him 13 or 14 and me three years younger), and rather than stopping us our dad let us continue fighting. My brother eventually over-powered me at which point my father intervened. I wanted him to intervene minutes before and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. We did not normally ‘act up’ in front of my father because his severe temper made misbehaviour a bad idea in general. We had a pretty strict rule of ‘no fighting’ at school even though I suppose we were toughened a bit by farm life, and may have been ‘good’ fighters (within our age brackets:). Some three decades later, I understand that my father was teaching me how to fight that day when my brother beat the shit out of me in the toolshed. It is the only explanation.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my father lately. He lives in Tennessee with my mom.
TLL/Rio
