We both listen to the same hard music and both like a lot of the same things, so you’d expect us to be the best of friends. Yet I am fire and he is ice, we constantly fight and clash; but hey siblings don’t get along anyway, right? He was 21 going on the next age up. Shortly before he would ever hit that age I would be thirteen. Yeah nine years man, yet so much a like, I used to- in a not creepy way- idolize him. Mainly because everyone else thought he was “the most wonderful thing to hit Earth since Elvis!” It was always “He’s so responsible!” Or “Wow! He’s great in ROTC!” and the oh-so-famous “He is such a hard worker!” as long as I can remember. Even though he had bad grades and drank before the legal age plenty, he was an angel; and here I am with all A’s and B’s and strongly against most things like that. Nothing I did could live up to him and the legacy of him. I personally always thought he hated me, I was actually positive, he was always cussing me out and yelling at me for no reason, after time it grew from a strange awe to a strange dislike. Well I guess I shouldn’t put the blame on him, it’s not his fault people bow down to him like a God. Honestly, he could kill someone and it would justifiable, yet I could go out and kill for the same reason and it would be a horrible thing. He has a criminal record too, not for murder but for something less severe; I was the only one of my mom’s kids who had never been in trouble with the law, but of course as always he got the break, my brother who always gets the breaks, got off easy with Caltrans and probation. Don’t swing the wrong way with that I love him and I don’t want him in prison, I don’t need two brothers locked up with the fuzz, but it just figures. It’s strange how I’m expected to be fine with living in the shadow of someone I love. Yet I have managed to come to terms with it lately and understand that I never will be him. I will also never live up to him. I will always be below in the charts; the kid under the bleachers; the cracked egg in the carton. It’s just the way things have to be. I have always been in the shadows, and that’s where I will stay, never to stray from them, to just keep wandering aimlessly stuck in the shadows of all the greatness that I cannot reach.