I bet my big brother could beat up your big brother.
I was your normal, trouble-making child. My mother and father treated me like your normal, trouble-making child. When I got into trouble, I received my due. But really, there wasn't much to get in trouble for, since they watched me like hawks.
But regular, working-class hawks that they were, sometimes they had other things on their minds. At those points in time, I would be told to stay inside and keep out of trouble, commands that were accompanied by dire threats.
All things told, I should have learned to not run around the house swinging long, pointed sticks, and my parents should have learned that to send me outside with the same threats would have been far more effective.
But I digress.
My older brother Joe was the quiet, studious child all parents need if they are to have a child like me afterward. Really, though, they might have noticed something. Sure, he only ever got A+'s, got every sports trophy known to man, and was infuriatingly modest and never made a big deal about it. But someone should have noticed when he began bringing books home from the library with titles like 'How to Conquer the World in 60 Days' and 'Your Very Own Guide to World Domination'.
Nobody with any influence did. I got the beat-down, however, when I was caught in his room looking for evidence against him. Joe passed it off as child's play, and I got a lecture and month-long grounding.
Meanwhile, Joe continued to build his plans. An explosion or two in his room didn't faze our parents one bit -they were certain he would be the next great nuclear physicist or something of the sort. All the uncles and aunts and grandparents and what-have-you showered him with appreciation.
Due to my unhealthy interest at the time of putting frogs into the pockets of guests, I was usually sent to my room in the attic. All said, I earned my living mowing lawns and pulling weeds, while Joe was funded by Harvard and Oxford and such institutions.
My parents figured I'd grow out of my frog-hiding tendencies, and I eventually went on to college, cramming four years of getting an accounting degree into five. With a 2.7 GPA. Then I started looking for work.
Joe, in the meantime, went to Harvard at age fifteen, and got his Master's of something-or-other in about three years. Then he went to MIT and did the same thing again.
And that's when it started.