The worm has officially turned. For safety’s sake, it has used its indicator and checked its mirrors before doing so, but there can be no doubt. From this moment on everything is different. Assumptions that have set like concrete over the past four decades now count for nothing. It is officially year zero. That’s because my brother, Cam, turns forty this week. Although many families would celebrate this milestone with cake and some kind of present, I choose to recognise it in an altogether different fashion. Forget signing a card. Or even buying a present. This year, my brother’s birthday is about one simple thing: sweet, sweet revenge.
The worm has officially turned. For safety’s sake, it has used its indicator and checked its mirrors before doing so, but there can be no doubt. From this moment on everything is different. Assumptions that have set like concrete over the past four decades now count for nothing. It is officially year zero. That’s because my brother, Cam, turns forty this week. Although many families would celebrate this milestone with cake and some kind of present, I choose to recognise it in an altogether different fashion. Forget signing a card. Or even buying a present. This year, my brother’s birthday is about one simple thing: sweet, sweet revenge.
That may sound a little ungenerous, if not downright rude. But this is no mere random attack on a sibling but, instead, a universal karmic alignment of a far greater magnitude. For as long as I can remember, my position as the eldest child in our family has been unassailable for three hundred and sixty one days out of every year. I enjoyed all the perks of office – the right to travel in the front seat on the way home from school, the right to administer a ‘pinch and a punch’ on the first day of every month and the right to have possession of the television remote control. But for four, gruesome days a year, this splendid existence would come under threat.
The reason for this rather major disturbance in the Force is simple – each year my brother and I are the same age for four days. To say we fought like cats and dogs is possibly, of itself, an act of animal cruelty. Determined to make as much hay as four days of sunshine would reasonably allow, my brother took every available opportunity to remind me that we were now the same age and I was no longer the boss of him. My attempts to point out that I had a three hundred and sixty one day lead over him were to no effect. He was entirely unmoved and took possession of the remote control to reinforce the point. Suddenly my big brother powers were rendered completely useless. It was like forcing Superman to strap on a pair of Kryptonite underpants. He did not so much challenge my authority as he did my entire reason for existence.
At the time, it felt like a massive injustice – the kind that deserves if not a pre-emptive military strike then the strictest of sanctions. But in the years since, I have taken time to reflect and, I’ll admit, I now see things differently. In retrospect, it is little wonder that Cameron took every chance he could – no matter how fleeting – to cast off the chains of my oppressive reign of terror. Because it is true to say that in those years I was not just an older brother. I was a despot.
There are many different kinds of older brothers. There are those who are simply disinterested and treat younger members of the family as though they don’t exist. That was never really an option for me. Our geographical isolation meant I was unable to traipse off to the local shopping centre to hang out with a bunch of like-minded malingering youths. Even getting to the nearest milk bar required an overnight hike. Like it or not, we were stuck with each other. It’s little wonder that we went a little stir-crazy from time to time.
Some older brothers trade in violence and beat their siblings into submission. Not me. My preferred theatre for sibling warfare was the mind. It was there that I acted out my treacherous schemes and plots. To think of it now makes me cringe with embarrassment. Indeed, the list of cruel and unusual taunts I directed at my various brothers and sisters is simply far too appalling to publish here. It is enough to say that I once enraged my brother so much that he knocked a hole in my door. A brown patch of Selley’s disturbingly named ‘Spakfiller’ on an otherwise white door would continue as a reminder in years to come of my ability to be awful.
Once, I emptied my moneybox onto the top of the Coonara heater and invited one of my brothers to help himself. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Coonara wood-fire heater is a large black metal box that radiates heat. It is so hot to the touch that you generally place a protective grill at the front to prevent the unfamiliar from losing a layer of skin. Naturally, coins soak up heat like a metal sponge and my brother’s enthusiasm for collecting abandoned coinage was suddenly balanced by a burning sensation. It is often said that itchy palms mean that you’re about come into some money. Burning palms, however, means that you will shortly require some kind of medical treatment. No wonder my brother thought he should rise up against me by claiming the mantle of ‘eldest child’.
As richly as I deserved it, I can stand the annual mutiny no more. But, as with most things in life, there is a tipping point and that tipping point is forty years of age. For the next four days, my brother and I will both be forty. I know he won’t call to say I’m not the boss of him as those days are far behind us. It is time to seek revenge for every time he tried to challenge my authority. This year, it will be me that rings him. Yes, I will be the one who takes pleasure in the fact that we are the same age. That may sound cruel, but old habits die-hard before producing a series of ever-less successful sequels. But that is beside the point. For now it is enough to say that by teasing my brother in this manner, I will once again become the tyrant I was always supposed to be. Happy birthday, Cam.