The In-Betweeners

I was never the kid who had some deep dark secret in their past that shaped them into the person they grew up to be. I wasn't sexually harassed by a family member, I hadn't been adopted, my parents didn't have an ugly divorce, they didn't ignore me or over-protect me, my older brother didn't horribly bully me and my little sister wasn't out to embarrass me and ruin my non-existent social life. I'm sure, reader, that you're sick of hearing this by now, but my home life, much like every other facet of my life, was normal.

I lived in a comfortably small, tan, two-story house in the middle of Bridgewater Avenue in my hometown of Wilmington. In that house you could find a kitchen, with squeaky clean granite counters and brand-new stainless steel appliances, a living room that was dusted and vacuumed everyday, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a computer room that held my brother's precious laptop and my sister's beloved American girl dolls, a living room that held my own precious books, and a den where my father could be found every Sunday watching football or whatever sport was in season.

My older brother Tom was two years older than me. We shared a bedroom, but that was the extent of anything we shared except for the same genes. Generally, we ignored each other. We had an unspoken rule between us, you don't bother me and I won't bother you. We never really fought, because of this unspoken rule; I was never the little brother who purposely annoyed him and his friends while they played videogames, and he was never the older brother who tried to "toughen me up" by wrestling with me and picking on me. For all we acknowledged each other, we might as well have not even had a brother.

It was pretty much the same with my little sister Alexis. She was five years younger than me, too big of a gap for us to have ever had a chance of being close with each other. She wasn't old enough to follow me on my adventures as a kid, and she wasn't young enough to blindly idolize me either. Tom was a different story though. Alexis loved Tom. She always followed him around and imitated him. He never seemed to mind though, they had a strange connection; they understood each other on a level that I could never seem to reach. They always knew what the other was thinking, telepathy almost, and I always was the one left out of the loop.

I remember once, when I was eleven, we were all in the back yard at our aunt's house for a family barbecue. I don't remember what the occasion once, perhaps the fourth of July or maybe a graduation party for one of our cousins, but I do remember the day. It was beautiful out, the sky the brightest blue I had ever seen with streaky clouds that looked almost as if they had been painted across the sky by Leonardo da Vinci himself. I preferred those clouds to the big fluffy-looking ones, they seemed more real, more nature and less Toy Story. I remember laying in the just-mown grass and staring at the too-blue sky while my brother and my sister and my cousins played kickball for hours. I don't think I even noticed that they were all busy having fun until my one cousin kicked the ball in my direction and it bounced over my still form.

"James, give us the ball!" Tom yelled, laughing while he grabbed our older cousin's shirt to keep him from advancing to the next base.

"Hurry up! They're gonna score!" Alexis screeched.

I remember sitting there, bemused, still too caught up in my own thoughts to really have it register in my mind what they were talking about. Score? Score what? Who? And then it finally registered, and I hurried to pick up the ball and throw it back to them; too late. The other team had scored, and Tom and Alexis had lost. They weren't necessarily mad, per say, I mean who really could be? It was a family kickball game after all, and they weren't really overly competitive people, no one in my family really was. I guess it was more that they were confused. Confused about me. They didn't understand me and I didn't understand them. It didn't really bother me much at the time, but I could see it bothered them, to some degree.

They were never bothered enough to try and understand though. There was the occasional moment where Alexis would try and convince me to watch a movie with her and Tom, or when Tom would encourage me to have a catch with him and Dad out on the front lawn, but their attempts were never really whole-hearted and, after a time, became more and more infrequent.

Maybe this should have bothered me more than it did, maybe I should have put more effort in to connecting with my brother and sister and my parents. But I didn't, and there's nothing I can do to change that now. The past's the past and it's always going to be the past.