The family is out camping. We have a small camping trailer set up. Our two boys (eight and four) are off playing somewhere when I suddenly hear a loud SMACK, and the youngest starts crying. My wife has rushed over.

Wife: “[Youngest Son], you just ran headfirst into the camping trailer!”

Youngest Son: *Between sobs.* “[Older Brother] told me that if I believed hard enough, I could run at the trailer and God would remove it for me.”

Both my wife and I turn to glare at our eight-year-old, who looks a combination of proud and guilty.

Wife: “[Youngest Son], your brother will sometimes try to play pranks on you. Don’t always listen to him, okay?”

Youngest Son: “Okay.”

Wife: “So what have we learned from this?”

Youngest Son: “That there is no God.”

We both laughed. Except for our eight-year-old, who had to endure the entire camping weekend with no snacks or candy for punishment.

Our small town is the location for an overnight call center for some reason. A lot of the locals work there, and tonight’s shift in my specific department has my brother and me working.

I’m talking to a caller who is trying to get us to do something against policy.

Caller: *Angry.* “Why can’t you do it?!”

Me: “It’s against policy, and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

Caller: *Angrier.* “You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about! Escalate me to your manager!”

The only other person in our department is my brother, so he takes over. He tells the caller the same thing.

Caller: “Escalate me to the man at the top! I don’t want to talk to you anymore!”

My brother ‘escalated’ him back to me.

Me: “Sir, I have been made aware of your request. Unfortunately, we are unable to complete this request as it goes against state data protection laws.”

Caller: *Suddenly nice as pie.* “Oh, well, if that’s the case, I guess I’ll accept it. Thank you for explaining it to me. Those other two guys before you really didn’t know what they were doing.

Me: “I’ll be sure to talk to them about it, sir.”

He hangs up, and my brother and I laugh. These kinds of customers always seem to listen if they think they’re talking to the ‘man at the top’; it gives them a sense of self-importance.

All of us grandkids (four of us) are visiting our grandmother. She’s teaching us how to play chess. My brother isn’t getting it.

Brother: “But why does the Knight have to move like that?”

Grandmother: “It just does. It’s the rules.”

Brother: “And why are those pieces castles when they can move? Castles don’t move!”

Grandmother: “Try not to think of them as literal things; it’s just names we give the pieces to know what they do. Like that game you play with all the monsters. They all have different powers, yes?”

Brother: “You mean Pokémon?”

Grandmother: “Yes. That one. Think of the pieces as Pokémon.”

My brother then reaches across the board and knocks the enemy king over.

Grandmother: “What was that?”

Brother: “I used 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt.”

Grandmother: “…”

Brother: “It was super effective.”

My dad catches my teenage brother a few seconds before he tries to put his phone in the microwave to ‘charge it’ because of what a prank YouTube video said.

Mom: “What’s going on?”

Brother: “Dad won’t let me charge my phone!”

Dad: *Explains.*

Mom: *To my brother.* “My sweet boy, I love you, but sometimes I wonder if your head exists just to keep your ears from clapping together.”

My mother was a single mother taking good care of my younger brother and me. I had a vague idea she also dated, but she kept that part of her life mostly secret until one day a boyfriend showed up at our house.

My mom explained there was a problem with where he lived, and so he was going to be staying with us temporarily until it could be fixed, but just for a month.

Then, a little more than a week after that, a woman showed up with a baby and stayed for a visit. She showed up a few more times over the next week or so until one day she left the baby with us after her visit and never returned.

As I’d eventually learn, she was the ex-girlfriend of my mother’s current boyfriend. He hadn’t known she had gotten pregnant while they were dating until she showed up with the baby. She had no maternal instinct at all and so soon just abandoned the baby with the boyfriend and ran off to avoid the responsibility. And so now we had the boyfriend and the baby both living with us, and they ended up staying much longer than originally planned.

Now, I was baby obsessed at the time and was completely on board with the addition of a baby in our household. I was always wanting to hold and ‘take care’ of him; I even insisted on changing his diaper once or twice (I quickly learned that was one task best left to adults, though). Still, I enjoyed the baby, and once he was walking, my brother started to enjoy playing with him as well.

I was far less sold on the baby’s father. He wasn’t terrible; he didn’t yell or scream or go around acting cruel, and he did help around the house getting groceries and such. However, it was pretty clear he didn’t like kids and saw us as something to be tolerated. I don’t think any kid would enjoy someone invading their personal space who mostly ignored them and just didn’t enjoy them.

He and I quickly came up with an unspoken agreement to just ignore the other’s presence, and that probably would have been fine if that was my only issue. However, my big complaint was his indifference to kids applied to all three kids in the house. I could understand his ignoring me or my brother and didn’t mind that, but his ignoring his own son offended me greatly. Even at that age, I was upset he did so little to care for his own son. His son was great and deserved more attention from his biological father than he got.

Eventually things soured between my mother and her boyfriend. I vaguely recall her asking me if I would mind if he stopped living with us, which I responded with a happy ‘that would be fine’ response.

One day I was asked to take the kids into the room to ‘play’ when an argument broke out. My mother almost never got angry or yelled, so I figured if she was that upset something REALLY bad must have happened, and it was my duty to watch out for the younger kids until whatever was wrong settled down.

Eventually, the argument reached the point when my mother told her boyfriend to leave and not come back. I honestly was kind of selfishly happy to be rid of him at first. Of course, that was only because I hadn’t yet thought about it enough to realize if he left, his son would go with him. My opinion of the situation changed drastically when I realized the reason he was at my door was so he could come and take my toddler playmate away with him.

I ran to the defence of the child, who by this time I considered my youngest brother. I can’t remember exactly what I said; I was so young and frantic and desperate, but I know I was hugging the toddler while screaming something to the extent that they couldn’t take him.

My other brother was young enough he couldn’t have fully understood what was going on, but he evidently had pieced together that something bad was happening and it involved his favorite playmate, because he too ran up and joined in hugging the little boy and crying.

As I said, the boyfriend usually wasn’t mean, but he had been arguing with my mom for a while and was clearly upset. I remember hearing the anger in his voice when he told me to move aside and feeling terrified of him as he marched into the room, clearly intending to force me and my brother aside to steal the youngest child away from us.

I stared back at him, crying and desperate, but unwilling to move, knowing I couldn’t possibly stop what was coming but unwilling to accept it.

Then I heard my mom’s voice ring out, strong and defiant, saying to leave the toddler here. Next thing I know, my mom was standing between us kids and her ex-boyfriend, and suddenly I had hope again. My mom has never seemed as strong as she had that day, and I just knew she would find a way to protect all three of us.

She told her ex that he didn’t know how to care for his son and clearly didn’t want to, and so he should leave the child with those who would love and care for him. There were a few more exchanges between the adults; I was way too upset to follow it all, but soon the ex gave up and, in a huff, just walked out, leaving his son with us. Soon my mom was on the floor wrapping all three crying kids in her arms, assuring us it was okay and she was so proud of us.

I was happy to be rid of the boyfriend, but I recall the anxiety in the back of my mind, the fear he would be back to steal my ‘youngest brother’ away from me. My mom assured me she would take care of it, but I was never fully appeased until the day my mom showed up with custody papers in her hands, telling me he was now officially our brother for real, and no one could take him away from us.

While I wasn’t privy to the details at the time, Mom actually bent the truth that day to appease my anxiety about losing our brother. What she actually had was temporary custody papers signed by the ex-boyfriend. It would take a lot longer for the full adoption to occur, but eventually it would happen.

The ex-boyfriend would show up every few years wanting to have contact with our brother. It would last a few months, at which point my mother would be upset that the ex-boyfriend was being a bad influence on her son. The ex-boyfriend would then have worn out his parental motivation, at which point he would disappear again.

Eventually, my brother realized this pattern and started refusing his biological father’s visits, not wanting to meet with someone who was just going to disappear again. He has told us all he is thankful we adopted him away from his father on multiple occasions.

Much later, I would learn that my mom had known the relationship with the boyfriend wouldn’t work for some time but had grown to love my brother so much (and was worried what would happen to him without her) that she had stayed in the relationship so she wouldn’t lose him.

To this day she refuses to tell me what caused the original fight that ended the relationship; all I know is it was something exceptionally bad and which made her worry he was going to be dangerous to allow near us kids.

Mom tells me even when she told the boyfriend he had to leave, she was torn and didn’t know what to do about his son. While I remember only being afraid and terrified at losing my brother, my mom says what she saw was a strong girl standing up to someone nearly three times her size in defense of her brother.

It was me and my brother coming to the defense of our youngest brother that finally made up her mind. If the two of us were as adamant about keeping him as she was, then she couldn’t let him leave with a man who clearly couldn’t care for him. She’s told me many times she was never prouder of me than she was seeing me standing up for my youngest brother that night.

I still don’t think I did that much. All I really know is that I’m glad I can safely claim to be a sister to two amazing brothers.