A DAY IN THE LIFE: BROTHERS -- MAYBE CAIN WAS ONTO SOMETHING

A couple of weeks ago I watched an entertaining movie called "The Brothers McMullen." It's an interesting story about three brothers and their lives as Irish-Americans.

These brothers didn't get along very well and that reminded me of my brothers. As children, my brothers and I never really got along either.

But brothers have never gotten along. I guess they're not supposed to.

Since the dawn of time, this has been the case. Adam's eldest boy, Cain, felt he really had it harsh. He had the taxing job of tilling soil while his just-as-abled little brother, Abel, had the casual job of watching the sheep.

While I don't condone Cain's solution, I must admit it entered my mind while I was growing up with the strong-willed hellspawn that spewed from my parents.

I'm the oldest of four brothers. Two of them are brothers by blood, the other by right of passage and the at-first disturbing remarriage of my father.

Patrick will be 21 next month. How time flies. I still remember the irritable, moody, quick-tempered, sometimes hostile teenager. How he's grown. Now he's a irritable, moody, quick-tempered, sometimes hostile adult.

Actually, he's kind of mellowed the last couple years. But I still remember one morning several years ago, coming down the stairs to find him digging around the pantry looking for something to eat.

I don't know how, but my asking him what he was looking for somehow led to a fist fight outside our house. I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember he used my back to break a broom.

Later, he said he was mad because he couldn't find anything to eat and I made it worse when I came in and breathed morning breath on him.

Billy is a lot like Patrick ... only different. We never really got into fights, but my memories of him are just as fond.

One of the most memorable involves doughnuts. Kind of.

One day after school a 5-year-old Billy came out of school with an obviously full bag with pictures of doughnuts on it.

Patrick and I demanded that he share the doughnuts with us. Billy shuffled his feet and said he didn't have anything in the bag.

We knew he was lying.

And I, being the oldest, and therefore the meanest, grabbed the bag from him. I reached into the bag, only in the name of fairness mind you, to divvy the doughnuts up among the three of us. (Unless they were jelly filled in which case I was going to eat them all myself.)

Anyway, I reached in the bag and pulled out what was in there. And, as I'm sure you've figured out, it wasn't doughnuts.

Apparently Billy had an accident that day and school involving a certain intestinal requirement. His teacher had instructed him take off his underwear and was going to send them home.

You guessed it -- in a doughnut bag. And that's what I pulled out of the bag that summer afternoon, getting ... well, you know what ... all over my hands.

I chased Billy all the way home for that, sure he had done it on purpose. I'm still not sure he didn't.

Probably a more-interesting Billy story would be the time he put a sprinkler in a minister's house via an open window and turned the water on "just because."

But I wouldn't want to embarrass him or remind the minister.

And then there's Trent.

While not having the name Moyers, something I'm sure he considers a blessing, Trent is as much a brother of mine as the rest. He wore my socks, bummed money off of me, asked me to buy him booze (which I did), and all the other things that brothers do.

And equally got on my nerves.

Trent liked to stir up trouble. He'd walk past me, frog me in the arm, and then when I'd get up to get even, he'd yell to the folks.

"Quit picking on him," they'd yell to me.

And talk about not taking no for an answer. This boy ought to consider being a salesman.

"Let me borrow your blue shirt, Scott," he'd ask in a way that was a lot like telling.

"No."

"Come on," he'd beg.

"No."

"You know you want to, man."

And so it would go.

There are countless other stories about these interesting characters that I could tell and then there are some that I could never tell. While they have all gotten on my nerves from time to time, and I am sure I have there's, all brothers have secrets.

And we'd never tell.

Now I guess I should say how much I actually like my brothers and how much I care about them, but I really can't.

They'd never let me live that down.

~Scott Moyers is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.