My brother, Christopher James, occassionally asks me when I'm going to write about him. This is my journal, last time I checked. I kind of write whatever I want to write about. But I suppose I could write about my brother, and distill almost eighteen years of knowledge into a handful of paragraphs that will not do justice to the kid.

When my mom got pregnant with Chris, I was about 10-1/2 and my sister about 8 years old. Don't know how long it took me to figure out that mom was expecting, rather than just getting fat like my dad kept claiming. Then mom and dad went to the hospital and a couple days later she came back with Chris. Wonder what they would have named the kid if it had been a girl?

This was a long time ago, so my memory is a bit hazy. Mom and dad worked a lot, which left taking of care of Chris up to my sister and I, mostly my sister. This was like after he was a year or two old, before then they took him to the restaurant and left him in a crib I think. Not the best place for a baby to be, but that's the way it was.

Cleaning up after a toddler and feeding him and such is not a great job, and one that I tried to avoid whenever I could. He wasn't much of crier in general, although maybe I've blocked that out. He was quite cute in his one-piece pajama. The kind with the padded feet that zips up in the front. Sort of like a fluffy space suit, without a helmet.

Thinking back on some of the things that happened to my brother, it's amazing to me that he survived without any brain damage, but who can tell, really? We'd put him on the couch to watch tv, then we would go to our rooms to play. Next thing you know, he's crying because he rolled off the couch on the ground. Sometimes we'd be close enough to hear the thunk as his head hit the ground. Small children have soft, squishy heads, so you really shouldn't let them hit their heads.

By the time I went to college, the kid was seven and going to grade school. Golden Empire being about three blocks away, although I don't think he was old enough to walk there and back by himself. After that I haven't really seen him much. Summers while I was going to college and a few days each year after I graduated. It's one of those things that really surprises me, but the kid, for whatever bad judgmental decision, looks up to me. More than he looks up to my sister, who is the responsible one. I'll never figure it out.

Chris has done some things that Steph and I didn't do when we were young. Well, Steph was a Brownie, so I guess Chris being a Boy Scout for a year is about right. He's gotten a Black Belt in some form of martial arts that he has been doing for a few years now. He actually has friends that he sees out of school regularly. I haven't been able to keep track of his life as much as I should. In consequence it's hard to think of him as my brother. He's just this kid that I know. Every once in a while some sort of brotherly impulse move me, but for the most part, he's just Chris.

Chris has a part-time job at Kentucky Fried Chicken. And he's decided to keep working during his Senior Year, something I don't think I did. He also gets to keep most, if not all of his paycheck. I remember my mom allowing me to keep anything over $200 that I earned each paycheck. This amounted to about $40 with my work schedule. The rest went to my college fund, which backfired a bit, since financial aid subtracts any savings you have from the amount of financial aid you're eligible for.

So it's Christopher's Senior Year. Both my sister and I urge him to do all those Senior things. Skip Day, Breakfast, the Proms, the activities. Now is the time to enjoy life a bit, before college. Do all those things that we didn't quite do when we were in high school. He has his whole life ahead of him, and I can see the urge that some parents have to push their kids to do the right things that they themselves neglected to do.