... I shared a room with my younger brother Tim. We had a large attic type room with the ceiling following the roof line down to about 3 feet off the floor. Taller people would bump their heads as they walked closer to the wall. Tim had his side of the room and I had mine. I have many fond memories of us sharing a room, because that meant that me as the older brother of 5 years was experienced in the art of fooling my younger brother who was the more inexperienced. What was fun for me was not always popular with him and more than a million times I would get in trouble after carrying out a little plan. I would play my little jokes on him. He would scream MOOOOOOOM, and at that point was usually when I would receive my comeuppance. Many times that punishment found me in the garden weeding or hoeing around the corn. I hated working in the garden. That is why mom or dad would send me there. One day after I had received my comeuppance for a wonderfully concocted tease, I was there in the garden weeding and my brother decided it was time for a ya yana ya ya ya moment. You know what that is, little kids say it all the time. Kinda like nanna nanna boo boo you can't ketch me. On the same line anyway. At the time my parents were building onto our house, so there was a huge pile of dirt mounded up just behind the construction site right in front of the garden. My brother (who never did anything wrong') climbed the hill and started his banter. "Ya yana ya ya you got in trouble." Hey I was the older brother, I should have been shown some respect but instead I was ya yana ya ya'd. I was furious, I was livid... I grabbed a big green tomato and launched it in an arch fashion, not directly at his face but in a arch. You know an arch like one half of the golden McDonalds arches. With no real plans of hitting him. Honest! But what happened next from my point of view was the most funniest thing I had ever seen. He moved around trying to dodge the tomato. Oh yes he saw it coming. He was trying to get out of the way, but the way I see it, he wanted to get hit. That big green fruit exploded on top of his head. I mean it looked like someone had placed a green tomato on his head, put a firecracker in it, lit the fuse and it exploded. He ran screaming into the house. I laughed until I came to my senses. Replaying the scene in my mind, I thought was that his brain that just blew up or was that the big green tomato that I had launched. Their was not blood shed that day, no brain damage, just green salsa all over the place. Again I received my comeuppance. As I would for many different reasons that year. Some kind of conspiracy if you ask me. I was totally innocent. I can tell you this... We had the prettiest weed free garden that year. I can still see that green tomato flying through the air and then an explosion of green goop....
Man I hate to weed in the garden!
