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Giving Your Brother the Gift He Most Wanted
And he would take it, won’t he?
As a kid, I used to dream of earning lots of money for one reason — so that I could buy my brother a lot of gifts. Ours was a lower middle-class family and my father prioritized our private schooling over wasteful spending. That meant we didn’t have lots of toys growing up. Being the older kid I knew it was right, but it didn’t ease the sting, especially during the festival seasons when I would hear about my cousins getting another set of Hotwheels or the latest video games. In those moments my resolve to become someone like an engineer or doctor strengthened only for one reason — for buying my little brother any gift he wanted.
My younger brother was also very innovative. While my idea of getting gifts was limited to cliches like a bicycle, a stack of books or an 8-bit controller video game which most of our friends have, my brother’s ideas were exotic. One summer he wanted roller skates (nobody in our neighborhood skated). Another time he was egging my parents for a Playstation (I had not even seen one). When he was thirteen years old he went on days of protest for getting a bike on his birthday (he was underage).
All these things that he demanded made me chuckle at one level, but at another make me jealous — why didn’t I think of this?
