You Better Recognize...

My first fracas with one of my siblings occurred when I was four. A neighbor had given us a sack full of second hand clothes and I laid claim to a blue shirt with a sun-glasses wearing Snoopy emblazoned across the front. I had no idea I hand stumbled upon a very much coveted Joe Cool t-shirt. I am certain my brother would have been content to allow me to keep the shirt if it had not boastfully proclaimed that Joe Cool always had a cool day. That seemingly innocuous assertion assured my limited ownership.
“Hey you wanna go play,” my brother asked, nodding his head in encouragement. I was taken aback. My brother was asking me to play with him!
“Okay,” I replied. “What do you want to do?”
“Let’s wrestle in the living room.”
I followed him into the living room, which was separate from the den, and waited for him to explain the rules.
“Okay, I am going to pin you down and you are going to try and get up,” he said in a concise manner.
“What do I do when I get up?” I asked solemnly. This was my one shot…I had to make sure I was clear.
“Then I pin you down again and you try to get up again,” he informed me.
“Okay.” I am unclear what happened next but I recall wondering if wrestlers were supposed to use fists right before shards of pain stabbed my euphoria. Suddenly, I was free and my bottom lip stung unmercifully. I put my tiny fingers to my lip and felt the warm, unmistakable evidence of blood. I looked down at my shirt. Snoopy was also bleeding and not having such a cool day after all. I looked at my brother, whose narrowed eyes silently conveyed how things were going to be from now on. In what would begin an unusual dance between us, I narrowed my eyes as well before opening my mouth and screaming at the top of my lungs. Fear of the unknown flashed across my brother’s face. We were in uncharted territory and the lines were being drawn.
My father came barreling around the corner in nothing but his underwear. “What’s going on in here,” he bellowed before seeing the blood on my shirt. I cried louder for good measure.
“Boy,” he said, pointing his finger in my brother’s face before snatching me up, “I’ll slap your John Brown jaws you ever hit your sister again. You got that?” Little did we know, this would be a common and empty threat growing up.
My mother, having been interrupted from her evening cup of coffee, came in and looked at my lip. “What happened?”
I took a good long sniff and stuck out my swollen lip. “Keith hit me on purpose. He wanted my shirt.”
“No I didn’t! That shirt is stupid. We were just wrestling,” He protested. My father walked over, with me still in his arms, and popped my brother with enough force to disturb a feather. I smiled and silently conveyed the fact that if he wanted things to get ugly, he better be prepared to bring it. 'Cause it was on.