“Dead leg!” was what my older brother Todd would shout as he balled up his right hand into a fist and slammed it down hard on my thigh like a rubber headed hammer. Upon impact I’d scream, sending Todd into a fit of laughter. When he laughed, the outer corner edges of his eyes slipped back towards his ears and his right front tooth, the only crooked one in his mouth, popped out over his bottom lip.
Tommy, my other older brother, and the oldest of the three of us, was more covert with his teasing. He’d wait until I was asleep in my bed to switch out my Raggedy Ann doll for the pocked necked, yellow rubber chicken he kept on hand for such occasions. He’d wait quietly outside my bedroom door to audibly witness the moment I’d wake up to discover a gangly rubber chicken where my drool-stained Raggedy Ann used to be.
It randomly occurred to that the last time I lived under the same roof as my brothers I was 4 years old and in June I turned 40. In the almost 36 years that have passed, memories of my brothers’ shenanigans have been replaced with the dark reality of their alcohol and every-drug-you-can-think-of addictions. Thinking about this also made me realize that although I was born with two older brothers, I’ve lived most of my life as an only child.
[For more on this story by Dawn Clancy, go to https://www.thefix.com/how-i-became-only-child]
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