When I was
young everything was so easy, my parents made sure of that. They pampered me
with everything I ever needed then my brother was born. Having a baby brother
was kind of fun because it meant that I always had a playmate (though we did
fight a lot as most young boys did.). My father had a talent for storytelling
back then, everything he said, be it a story or not (but at the time, I always
expected to hear a story from him) I would listen and immediately be
brainwashed by his words. He used to talk to me a lot about being the older
son. You see, he was the youngest in his family and wasn't always the priority
in my grandparent's eyes. My father regretted the fact that he wasn't able to be
close to his father and he tried to connect with me as often as possible by
making me listen to his lengthy speeches about how much a privilege it is for
me to be the eldest son.
One of the
things he nagged about was how I received so mush more than he did, my father
lived on hand me downs that have been handed down so many times that most of
these things have lost their original color. So I got a lot of clothes from my
parents, but since I had a brother they were all to keen on the belief that if
I got something from them ,my brother, Louie had to receive something of equal
value too to avoid inciting jealousy and showing favoritism. This spawned one
of my mother's self proclaimed "Cute" plans. She bought clothes for
us like mad and the things is she would buy the same outfits but in two
different sizes. In those tender years I and my brother had almost identical
wardrobes. Every time we went out me and Louie were forced to wear matching
outfits and made to walk around in public places like prize dogs for sale.
Though my brother didn't really mind, I found it very humiliating whenever
people would stare, point, whisper and ask me about our clothes. (Imagine that
happening abroad!)
I
complained a lot about it like a child would whenever he didn't want to eat his
Vegetables. My dad being a storyteller would try to convince me that it was
like being in the army and we all had to wear the same fatigues to distinguish
ourselves from our enemies. These "enemies" he said were other
siblings that wore matching clothes like we did. I never saw our
"enemies" however nor did I ever understand how they became my
"enemies" to begin with. The fact of having enemies was fun and my
dad was really banking on that. This story got old after a few years so my
father just whipped up some lame old excuse that if either me or my brother got
lost it would be easy to find me because they knew what the other was wearing.
It seemed very believable at the time.
As me and
Louie grew older we became conscious of how we looked a little bit faster than
other kids. It was really the clothes, having matching clothes everyday somehow
implied that we didn't know how to dress ourselves. This wasn’t true! my mother
just always made a point to fix our clothes and there was no room for
questioning her almost godlike fashion sense. It was really embarrassing
whenever some of my friends would ask about me and my brother's matching
attire.
Most of my
uncles and aunts found the outfits really cute but my cousins (like my friends)
ground the outfits very awkward especially during those ever so crucial family
pictures. They were kinder than most though, they avoided the topic as much as
possible while my aunts continued giving me and my brother matching clothes
twice a year
It took
quite a while for us to earn our independence from this fashion law. It was a
slow revolution which started from the bottom up, (we first ditched the
matching shoes, then socks, then pants etc) until we achieved fashion autonomy.
From that day on me and my brother formed an unspoken oath to be as different
as possible from each other as possible. But this was very hard to do as we
grew up together and pretty much broke this oath as soon as it was made. He
went on a more artistic path while mine was more conventional. He plays a good
custom left-handed guitar (he has a band and they even write their own songs)
and is part of his High School's theater club. I for one just focused on more
academic endeavors and went into sports like soccer or badminton where my
brother couldn’t follow in the same way i couldn't follow his path.
It’s kind
of stupid really, forcing ourselves to be different, but presently we both
ended up in our own unique ways and it’s this great difference which makes it
fun to be with each other.
