Happy Birthday, Little Brother!
This picture was taken the year after this story takes place! March 13th is my brother Tom's birthday. For some reason, I thought of this incident today when thinking about how to honor him. One day, when I was about 10 and my brother Tom was about 7, he and I had a knockdown, drag-out fight about something. I don’t remember why, and it’s not important to the rest of the story. But Mom suggested we spend the rest of the afternoon playing at separate friends' houses, to let things calm down. Tom and his friend went down to the end of the alley that was behind our house to pick pomegranates from a tree that hung over a fence and were easy to get to. (It was a different world back then. As long as we stayed “on the block” and checked in often, we’d be OK.) A bully that he knew from school happened to come by and started to give Tom and his friend a hard time. Because our mother didn’t raise no dummies, instead of getting i...