In The Middle Of Difficulty Lies Opportunity… For Revenge

In art class, my younger brother drew a portrait of someone he assured me was Albert Einstein, a claim I found… dubious. Our mother called it a masterpiece and insisted on framing it up on the wall in our room.

It was utterly creepy, with horrid nostrils and mismatched eyes that I could swear followed me wherever I went. It was also right above our beds, which meant I got to wake up to a creepy old man staring down at me every day.

Unfortunately, I was naive enough to mention it to my brother, who then gleefully insisted on keeping it there for the next decade. Eventually, we both moved out, and I threw the portrait out during the confusion of packing and moving out.

My brother found out eventually and vowed vengeance, promising that I’d one day regret tossing Einstein out. Nevertheless, those were six happy years spent away from that horrid portrait.

When the recent health crisis got worse, we moved back in to help our mother. The next morning, I woke up to find the portrait staring right down at me once again and freaked out.

Apparently, at some point, my brother had drawn another portrait of Einstein and deliberately made it even creepier than the last — warty nose, mismatched nostrils and eyes, moustache and expression that just screamed “pervert,” and wormy eyebrows. He hung it in the same spot as its predecessor after I went to bed.

I literally had it burned, but the damage was done. As promised, I regret tossing Einstein out. It wasn’t worth being traumatised by its successor.