Who is this?

My sister-in-law has pictures of my brother and I in their dining room, but, strangely enough, she had several of me from elementary school. I mean, it's not strange that they had pictures of me but why school pictures of me and not my brother.

My family has this thing with school pictures: We buy one of those double-sided book-style picture frames. In the left frame you have last year's picture with the current picture in the right frame. And all previous pictures are placed beneath the pictures being displayed. (Do other people do this? This is what my dad's mom did, and it's what I do.) I took the back off the right frame and found another picture. I held it up to my brother and asked, "Who is this?" My brother looked at me like I was an idiot.

"No, seriously. Who is this?," I asked. Still silence.

"Wait, is this me? This isn't me. I didn't have buck teeth. And look how blond this person is. Oh, wait.... Holy shit, I remember that shirt. Oh my god, this is me. This looks nothing like me."

My brother: silence.

But then I pulled out the other picture and saw this on the back:

To: Dad (Bruce)
My name
6th grade
11 years old

I realized that these were from the box of pictures I took from my dad's basement when I went through it a few months after he died. I knew I had left a box of stuff at my brother's house before I drove back to Mississippi. This had to've been where the pictures came from. It also helped me figure out the picture on the left was from 6th grade, the one on the right was 7th, and the one I didn't recognize was 5th grade.

I explained this all to my brother and he said, "Bruce? What? Just in case someone confused him with some other dad?"

Me: "Bite me, asshole. I'm taking these home with me."

Feel the love. (See next post about how much I do actually like my brother.)