My brother and I have always had an interesting relationship. If yin and yang could manifest into a set of siblings, that would be my brother and I. Growing up though, the two of us did not appear that different from each other, we both liked swimming in our small pond, we both liked fishing with dad, both played soccer. He and I used to play an improvised game of wiffle ball in our backyard, we would play it for hours on end. In the harsh upstate New England winters, we would mostly stay inside playing Nintendo to occupy our time, though an occasional sledding adventure was definitely had. All of this having been said, in the case of my brother and I, appearances can be deceiving.

My brother started listening to Rush Limbaugh in high school, and I bet you could guess what his political stances look like today. I, on the other hand, ended up pretty far to the left of center politically. We’ve raged over Facebook about everything from elections to gun control and I bet our friends on there are way past the eye-roll stage at this point.

My brother loves fishing to this day, whereas I’ve fallen out of love with the pastime. He loved fishing so much that he goes fishing for a living, an endeavor that still makes me proud to be his sibling. He also loves hunting, which I have always hated. My dad used to take me hunting and I detested every minute of it. He finally figured out that he should stop taking me when I let an eight point whitetail buck walk right under my tree stand and away because I didn’t feel like dragging his heavy ass out of the woods. What a relief it was to me the day my dad finally stopped asking me to brave the freezing cold to sit in the woods for hours!

I looked up to my brother growing up. He had the advantage of being older and having more developed skills in everything we ever did together (except for Nintendo). He looked out for me and held me responsible. I got so mad when he reported me to a summer program director for stealing candy from a convenience store (my accomplice in that act is now an NYPD cop, ha!). But thankfully I learned my lesson from that incident and never stole anything again in my life.

One day I had found a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog under his bed. (We were classy enough, ok?!) I honestly had no idea why he had something like that. Maybe he was intrigued by women’s clothes like I was? No it couldn’t be that, he had never said anything about that before and didn’t seem like he would be into that? Looking back on it now, I was laughably ignorant. I took that catalog though and spent hours thumbing through it, imagining how each item would feel and look on me. It was heaven.