Keeping my younger brothers in line was part of my job description. I’d watch them and made sure no one picked on them (except me). In return, they’d do whatever I’d tell them to do. Looking back, being the watch-dog of my brothers was a big responsibility, especially during the summer with a pool in the backyard--I could have fallen asleep by accident as I worshiped the god of suntans. I dominated by my very position in the family: “the oldest”. Once in a while it would inevitably get me into trouble. I wasn’t always wrong when I told them what to do or not to do, but I’m sure I was overbearing. I had a standard response to each situation when my parents were not around, “Knock it off or I’ll tell mom, who will tell dad, who will kill you.” My brother Rich was on to me and knew the true balance of power depended on getting to my mom before I got to her first. Rich was a mamma’s boy and he knew it. Michael was too young to know that the power I held was just empty threats.
On a typical summer afternoon you could find me in the pool floating on a raft like Cleopatra. One day, my brother Michael set out to annoy me by doing cannon-balls off the deck into the pool. I gave him the threat, “I’m gonna tell mom who’ll tell dad and you’ll be sent far away for spilling water out of the pool.” It always worked before. In a split second my sweet compliant brother did the unthinkable to his boss-sister. He swiped my brand new Panasonic Toot-u-Loop Radio off the deck, threw it into the pool and smiled. As I watched it sink to the bottom of the pool my only thought was to corner his insubordinate-butt on the deck before he got away. We screamed and yelled at each other. I told him I was going to kill him (not really intentionally murder him; the sister-kind-of-kill him). He escaped my grasp and ran dripping wet off the deck and onto the cement patio towards the house, sticking his tongue out at me. Echoing in my mind, I could hear the words my mother repeated year after year during the summer, “Don’t run on the patio!” Now I know why. Without looking down, Michael tripped over the gas line that ran across the patio to the pool-heater. I watched him fall in what seemed like slow motion. His face hit the pavement with a thud. When he lifted his head up his mouth was bloody. He couldn’t talk because he had nearly bitten his tongue in half. I panicked. It wasn’t the sight of blood that scared me; it was knowing my life was over because my mother was going to kill me for real. How could I do this to my little brother? Would she understand that it was in retaliation for ruining my now chlorinated waterlogged Toot-u-Loop radio? Not a chance. I hurried Michael up the stairs and into the house. Blood was everywhere and he was screaming.
My mom met us in the kitchen. In seconds she determined what happened and if my brother had actually bitten his tongue off. We needed to get Michael to the hospital immediately. She picked my brother up, grabbed a kitchen towel, the keys, and put us in the backseat of the stationwagon. I remember she drove fast while I held a towel over my brother’s mouth. Praying to ‘Hail Mary-who knew Grace’, (after all I assumed they were good friends) I pleaded that his tongue wouldn’t fall out. On our way to the hospital we got pulled over by the police. I learned something that afternoon that I carry with me to this day; never mess with a mother in crisis. She told the policeman (that’s what we called them back then) what happened and why she was speeding. He looked in the backseat and saw my brother's excessive bleeding, and me holding a damp blood soaked towel. I was sure he saw my guilt; knew I did it and let my mother go. In fact, he gave her a police escort to the hospital.
Once we arrived, I waited for my mother to turn me over to the authorities who would take me to jail. Luckily for me she forgot. In the emergency room I waited for my fate. I knew what I did was wrong, but it didn’t seem fair that I might get ten years in the slammer just for threatening someone’s life for throwing my radio in the pool. Maybe I could get out earlier for good behavior? If you knew me back then, you'd know that would be hard for me to do. I cried and asked The God of Second Chances, better grades, and ice cream, to let my brother speak and be normal. My parents told me the doctor put in gazillion dissolvable stitches in his tongue so that he would talk again (it was actually only nine stitches). He walked around with a swollen face and silent for a week. I tried to stay out of sight too in case they remembered how I maimed my brother for life. When my little brother finally healed, I had high expectations that he’d join the circus because he could now flip his tongue like a corkscrew. That was the 'first' miracle I ever experienced. I didn’t even get grounded for the remainder of the summer; that was the 'second' miracle. Maybe my parents saw the greatest trepidation and remorse in my eyes that caused them to forgive me and not put me up for adoption? Maybe it was because of Grace!
It is a fearful thing to know that one stupid act could alter a person’s life forever. That day goes down in my memory as ‘Whew Kim, that was a close one’. As penance, I will occasionally do community service if visiting a pool. It's easy to spot 'the oldest'. They are usually self-absorbed, bossy, and central to whatever is going on around them. Whenever I see brothers and sisters running on wet cement after their siblings I'll yell, “Stop running on the patio, you’ll bite your tongue in half! And be nice to your younger brother or you’ll go to jail.”
