Revised: Our Patriotism

Our Patriotism

I walked into our bedroom. I don’t remember where I was coming from or even how old I was at the time. I think I must’ve been in the eighth or ninth grade. My brother and I had the middle room. Mom’s and Dad’s was the next one down the hall to the left and our sister’s was on the other side.

As I walked into our room I saw Jonathan sitting on a chair. I looked at him and smiled. He looked back and barked, “don’t mess with me”. We knew each other well.

I was the older brother and, according to the faulty logic of my prideful and immature teenage mind, a command like that cast at me so blatantly and pithily from the mouth of my younger brother resounded more like an invitation in my ears. I had to mess with him now, if for no other reason, because he had ordered me not to.

Unaware that he was already in a bad mood I (almost routinely) punched him in the arm. From this simple action emerged a raging squall. Jonathan leapt up from the chair and grabbed me. I had been prepared for such a response and grabbed him back. Our hands gripped tightly at each others’ shoulders. We wrestled around some, as was custom under such circumstances.

Then, our normal fraternal bonding moment turned bad. I lost my footing and began to fall backwards. I couldn’t regain it and proceeded to scuttle backwards, quickly shuffling my feet to avoid falling down to the ground. We moved, still locked together. I pulled him with me and he pushed our tumbling masses along. We flew right through the doorway of our room and continued on until we hit the wall opposite our room in the hallway. At this point all motion stopped.

Some of life’s events change you and the way you think. You think you know things, then you learn you were mistaken and must relearn old facts. You are lost and must grasp on to new knowledge. Throughout our youth (up until that day) my brother and I always thought we knew what a wall was. A wall was a standing structure inside or outside a house usually used to separate one thing from other things. Most importantly, however, a wall was always hard. With this superbly inaccurate knowledge lodged in our brains we were both very surprised to find that this particular wall in our house was so very soft and weak. After pulling myself up we both looked back at the wall where we had just crashed and there, laughing back at us, was a hole, roughly the size and shape of my rear end.

We panicked! No more than thirty seconds before we had been locked in a vicious struggle for power, yet now we frantically worked together, searching for some way to save ourselves from a now inevitable doom. He blamed me, I blamed him and when that didn’t seem to work we dropped it and moved on. We brainstormed and searched our room for a solution, some way to hide our deed from the eyes of Mom and Dad, who would be getting home at any moment.

In our room we found a poster of the American flag. Dad had bought it for us and wanted us to hang it up, to be more patriotic. So, that’s exactly what we did. The hole was concealed and the problem was solved. Feelings of relief flowed through us as we complimented each other on a job well done.

For months afterward nothing was said about our patriotic poster on the wall. We had a lot of posters in our room already and Mom and Dad were under the impression that we were trying to be more patriotic (just like they wanted), but had to put this poster in the hallway for the sake of space in our room.

One day, after the event had been long forgotten, Jonathan and I sat innocently in our living room watching TV, not knowing that our past would soon be discovered. Mom, while walking through the hall right in front of our room, tripped and by instinct put her hand onto the wall to stabilize herself. Oh, how great was her surprise when, instead of being able to steady herself from the fall, her waiting hand travelled directly through our patriotism and out the other side. She yelled.

From the other side of the house we heard the cry of our names and instantly knew its cause. Short-lived relief now fled our bones as we awaited a most unpleasant future, for our lie had been discovered.