Happy birthday, Tyler!

It is my brother’s 24th birthday today. I remember when he was just zero. In fact, he was born prematurely, so I remember when he was negative one month, sort of.

My parents had originally planned for me to be in the delivery room, but since things were a little haywire with the prematurity and all, it didn’t work out that way. I just remember waking up and our family friends Steve and Kim were at our house and my parents weren’t. It was quite tense for a while there, since he wasn’t doing so hot at first, but luckily he was a tough little T-Rex.

He was in the hospital for a while, and I have very strong memories of being in the waiting room in the days after his birth while my dad was with my mom in her hospital room. My entire childhood was a series of frustrations that I was not an adult and people didn’t treat me as such, and I remember being annoyed that I had to stay in the waiting room. At one point, a hospital staffmember took me to the viewing window and let me look at Tyler. I had my little camera and took very blurry pictures of him through the glass. I then asked the staffmember to please take me back to where my father was expecting me. It irritated me when she laughed rather than taking me seriously, as I felt I deserved.

My brother and I similar in some ways but different in others. To generalize, I am more interested in process, and he is more interested in results. We both did well in school, though I did it because I was a natural-born nerd, and my brother did it more to achieve specific goals (e.g., the masters degree he’s working on now to help him advance in his career. My degrees are more or less mentally-masturbatory). I love food for the pleasure of cooking and eating, and I think if he could inject lean turkey directly into his biceps, he would. I exercise because it improves my general well-being; he is a fitness expert and the strongest person I have ever met (hence the T-Rex nickname). I really admire his abilities to set goals and achieve them. If I’m not good at something, I don’t even bother to try. He started out as a scrawny kid, but he worked hard and is now successful in his chosen field, the strength and conditioning training for football players. As a role model to those athletes, you can imagine that he’s much, much bigger now than he was in February of 1983.

It’s a good thing he used to be so much smaller, because it facilitated our favorite game, which involved him climbing into an empty Pampers box and me pushing him at great speeds across the living room carpet. He loved it, though in retrospect, all that whiplash probably wasn’t good for him. I guess it could have been worse; we could have tried to go down the stairs toboggan-style.

So anyway, happy birthday, Tyler. It looks like your life is unfolding well. I wish you good fortune in all your endeavors, though knowing you, you’ll make it happen without needing any luck.