This is something I wrote about yesterday and what the hell. I thought I’d share. I need blog fodder. This is one of my earliest memories. I must have been about 5 years old.

One day my younger brother and I were playing on the hearth of the fireplace. We had a hearth that sat up from the floor and you could actually sit on it. It was made of rock, I remember, and was always cold and hard and nubby. Anyway, I don’t exactly remember what we were playing. Perhaps he was playing with his army men? Maybe I was helping him set them up? At any rate, he made me mad. Very mad. Blinding mad (as he often did. You know how little brothers are, right?) I was so mad that I picked up a spaghetti jar of sea shells (found on the Oregon Coast) and smashed them on his back. The jar broke on his back and shells went flying all over the place. We were both absolutely startled. He started crying. When he cried, I did too. We both just wailed and carried on. Him out of pain, me just..I don’t even know. I know I felt fear. I was also kind of shocked at the outcome of my actions. I acted out of anger and, because I was a child, I didn’t think about what would happen if I picked up a breakable, heavy thing and broke it on someone. I think I was just shocked that my anger could cause so much destruction. And, of course, I felt the guilt one gets when they hurt someone they love. My brother could really make me mad. More so than anyone else ever has. But somehow I knew I gone way too far.

Then we became teenagers and entered the phase where I learned how to use my fingernails as claws. What can I say. He must have pushed my buttons once too often by that time.