I have two brothers. Sam is the oldest and Matt is the youngest. That leaves me as the middle child. The favorite! I’m kidding, Daddy didn’t have favorites, or at least he didn’t show it. And some people think since I was the only girl, I was spoiled rotten. Ha-ha! We were all spoiled. We always had more than we needed. But I was more on the rotten side of things. I was the one that got us in more trouble than my brothers. Growing up with brothers wasn’t so bad though. We had a lot of fun and mostly they loved playing jokes on me. I was easy to scare and they always knew they could make me mad in the end. And for some reason, they thought that was funny. So here is one time a prank wasn’t so funny in the end. 

We lived in an older two-story home. Our house was white with black shutters. A big front porch with a swing. The floors and stairs were hardwood. My brothers and I had rooms on the second floor and the rest of the house was on the first floor. Just a little background on our house. It’s important to know about our stairs. 

It was a warm sunny afternoon. Who am I kidding. I don’t remember what the day was like. It was many moons ago, but I do remember this story like it was yesterday. I was home alone with Matt and that meant I was responsible for him. I was around eleven years old. He is four years younger, and for those of you that aren’t good at math; that would have made him seven. I was downstairs in the kitchen getting something to eat. I wasn’t exactly sure if Matt was ok, I was only sure that he was upstairs. All of a sudden, I hear, clank…clank…clank…bang…bang…splat! I have heard these noises many times before. Remember me telling you that we had hardwood stairs. We would slide, roll toys, balls and throw stuff down the stairs all the time. I didn’t think anything until I heard, “Owwwww, my leg, ahhhhhh!” Matt was screaming! I panicked, I just realized that Matt fell down the stairs. I took off running through the kitchen, to living room, around the corner and saw him lying there at the bottom of the stairs holding his leg! I knew I was in big trouble now. I just let my brother fall down the stairs and break his leg. I get down on the floor and start asking what’s wrong, as he is still screaming that his leg hurts. I ask him to let me see! I am panicked! I am so upset that he’s hurt! He finally rolls over and starts laughing. Then he says, “I was just kidding, I threw toys down the stairs to make you think I fell down them.” “Are you kidding me!” I asked him. He only starts laughing harder. I got on top of him and starting hitting him so hard and yelled, “That’s not funny, don’t you ever do that to me again!” I was so mad. I almost started crying. He finally realized that his joke wasn’t a joke after all. 

I am not sure if beating him up made him realize what he did wasn’t a joke or me crying, but he never played another joke like that on me. 

Thanks Matt! I’m glad I can finally laugh at your joke.