brothers

Although I was more excited about the arrival of my sister than the existence of my brothers, my brothers had much more of an impact on me. In fact, had it not been for my brothers, I don’t know that I would be where I am today.

I have a brother 2 years older than me, one 2 years younger, and one 4 years younger. So, right from the get-go, I was always “one of the boys”. I was never one to shrink from a challenge; anything they could do, I could do better. I may not have come up with the idea to turn on the hose and make some good ol’ backyard mud to play in, but once things got started, I was definitely going to join in.

Don’t get me wrong; I had quite the collection of barbies, I wore dresses and pigtails, and my favorite color was pink – at least until I was 12. From the age of 6, I always had a female best friend. Recess was spent playing with girls, and I participated in plenty of sleepovers. I may not do makeup, but I am rather fond of nail polish. I’m not exactly what you would call super-girly, but there are definitely plenty of girly pursuits that I partake in.

That being said, I had many an adventure with my brothers. We built time machines that required every toy in the toybox, a dining room chair, and all the refrigerator magnets that could be reached by someone under 3 feet tall. We played Mario Brothers and don’t-let-ET-fall-in-the-invisible-pit on our Atari 2600. We made the impossible trek through the spiderwebby path between our two back neighbors’ fences. We let b2 play the flight simulator on the Commodore 64, because he was always good for a huge crash – and a crash always meant it was time to ‘parachute’, screaming of course, as we ran out the back door.

We often had to line up in the kitchen as mom grilled us to find out who had broken the plate or eaten all the cookies. Invariably, when none of us cracked, we were all sent to our rooms while my mom contemplated why it was that she had decided to have 4 children. We occasionally had to wait all day for dad to come home, just so we could line up for a dreaded spanking.

Poor b3 found himself in the emergency room on more than one occasion as he tried to keep up with the rest of us. Luckily for him, fingernails grow back and bones heal. We choreagraphed plays and puppet shows to put on for our unsuspecting parents. We went camping in the backyard. We wrote Basic programs on our IBM-compatible. B1 always knew the tv lineup, so we never missed re-runs of The Monkees or Batman.

B1 was hard to keep up with. When he learned to blow bubble-gum bubbles, I spent weeks working on it. When he came home from school and could write his whole name, I made him teach me how to do my lastname. When he learned how to tie his shoes, I studied the way my parents did mine until I could do it myself. (I consequently tied my shoes ‘wrong’ – with my hands actually crossed – until I was 21 years old and someone pointed out that my method was horribly inefficient and painful to watch.) When he figured out how to whistle, I spent a whole day walking around the house with my lips in a tight ‘o’ shape, blowing as hard as I could.

Even though we shared many adventures, there were some I couldn’t join in, because I was ‘just a girl’. When I was 5, I excitedly told my dad that I wanted to be a cub scout, too. B1 got to go off in his blue shirt and yellow kerchief to go do something really fun, I was sure of it. And he wasn’t the only one, there were other kids in the neighborhood, too. All I remember is my dad telling me I couldn’t be a cub scout, girls weren’t allowed. I’m sure he went on to tell me about girlscouts, but if I couldn’t do what b1 was doing, I wasn’t interested.

All my brothers went on to be boyscouts, where I wasn’t allowed to follow. Not being one to just accept the fact that the ‘Y’ chromosome makes for a superior fire-maker, arrow-shooter, and hiker, I organized my own backpacking trips with my friends. And found that girls can carry 25% of their weight on their backs and spend a week walking 35 miles through the woods, building fires and filtering water along the way, just as well as boys can.

It didn’t stop there; science and math weren’t ‘too hard’ for girls. And I certainly wasn’t about to play dumb to improve my appeal to the other gender. If they had a problem with me being smarter than them, they could go cry to their mommas about it for all I cared. I was a girl, yes; but that didn’t mean I should have a different playing field.

In college, I picked the ‘man field’ of computer science, and I excelled at it. I put those boys in my calc class to shame; they never saw me coming. I graduated with Latin honors, and had a fantastic job lined up when I graduated – which was more than many of my fellow graduates could say.

Today, I’m a software developer, where I work with mostly men. In fact, on my current project, I sit in a room with 4 guys, who range in age from a few years older, to a few years younger. And I love it! It’s just like getting to hang out with my brothers – every day.