Like most big brothers, I was mean to my younger brothers. I guess it was for a variety of reasons, my sisters were mean to me so I was mean in turn to them, or maybe it was because I was bullied at school so I needed someone in turn to bully, but probably it was because I was a jerk when I was younger.
Some simple background here, I have two older sisters and two younger brothers. One of my brothers, lets call him G, is only 3 years younger than I, while the youngest, lets call him D, is 8 years younger.
G was an even tempered kid growing up and didn't get into trouble a lot. D, on the other hand, was always into mischief. He felt it necessary to cause as much destruction as possible, all the time. One time he fed all of my Transformer Constructicons to our dog who promptly chewed them all to pieces. So with that example in mind, please do not judge what G and I did. We told D lies. We told him such outlandish lies to curtail his destruction that looking back on it, I almost feel bad. Then I remember my Constructicons and feelings of regret disappear.
In our garage, our dad had fluorescent light fixtures with those large pole-looking fluorescent light bulbs. They were constantly going bad, and being replaced, but he never threw the bad ones away, just put them up on a rack in the garage. Well one summer after he had collected about six or seven bad ones, he finally decided to discard them. He had one of my older sisters put them in the trash can in the backyard. Bad idea.
D found them pretty quickly and went and got G and I to grab them out of the trashcan. D said they looked like lightsabers and he wanted to try having a lightsaber battle with them. Well, I honestly do not remember who said it first, but we quickly elaborated on it once the idea was brought to fruition. I believe the conversation went something like this...
Either G or myself: "D, we can't have a lightsaber battle with them."
D: "Why not?"
Either G or myself: "Because, if we fight with them, they will break, and glass will get all over."
D: "So?"
Either G or myself: "So we will get in trouble and then have to clean it up."
D: "So?"
Either G or myself: "D, we can't break them because they are full of poison gas."
The other one of us: "Yeah, if we fight with them and they break, then the gas will escape and it will melt all the flesh off our bones!"
D: "What?!?"
Either G or myself: "Yeah, all lightbulbs are full of this gas. It is horrible, but this is the only gas that lights up properly, so they have to use it."
D: "Even the small lightbulbs?"
Either G or myself: "Yeah, don't break any lightbulbs unless you want your flesh to dissolve."
I know. We're horrible brothers to D. In our defense, at the time, it was all perfectly logical to us - tell a lie and prevent D from breaking more things. No big deal to us. I believe we even elaborated the lie further by saying it was a greenish gas and it stank real bad.
I am unsure how long this lie stuck with him, although when asked recently he said he does no longer believe it. Needless to say, the lie we told was successful. I do not believe D ever broke a lightbulb while growing up.
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