Glad We Are Not

Cain and Abel

by Jake Shapiro

Middle School without Sam was so much different and it felt a little less stable. I was transitioning friends for many reasons, one of them being that I got a little taste of feeling different and being bullied. My most common nickname in the seventh grade was UH-OH Oreo. The geniuses that came up with the nickname drew a connection between the UH-OH Oreo being white on the outside and black on the inside, and how I hung out with black people, and did what they all did. It wasn’t such a mean nickname, but every time I heard it I felt a little out of place, and different. The real bullying came when a friend of mine, or at least that is what I thought of him before he started bullying me. Almost everyday during lunch he would choke me until I literally turned blue. While he was choking me, he was laughing and acting like he was seriously going to kill me. As soon as he would see me turn blue, he would let go. Instantly things were back to normal. He was treating me pretty nice, or should I say normal because his nice wasn’t that nice, as I have found out. We would play basketball together and have fun, like nothing ever happened. But in my head I could never trust him. Every time I looked at him I pictured him choking me. Lets just say it was not the best image. I went about my days trying avoid him, but the only problem was, was that we had three classes together and the same group of friends. The almost daily choking was pretty unstoppable because if I told anyone I would be that loser that snitches. Then my nickname of UH-OH Oreo or white chocolate might switch to something a lot worse. If I couldn’t tell an adult, I could try beating him up or something along those lines to show that I can stick up for myself. Only problem was that I couldn’t, being a skinny kid with little muscle against the big kid with a good amount of muscle for a seventh grader. He also had a lot of friends who were big, and the school that I went to there were people you did not mess with, in fear that they could get a lot of people to jump you, or worse. He was one of those guys in my opinion. So instead of telling or fighting, I ended up crying at my housea good amount of the time. My parents were worried and didn’t know what to do. My brother though could empathize and relate. He had gone through, although not the same thing like being choke, similar bullying and feeling different. He helped me get my head on my shoulders and stay mentally strong. He told me that maybe these were not the friends that I wanted, even if they were the only ones who played basketball at lunch. And what do you know, I made new friends. Ones that didn’t choke me, but hugged, which in the beginning I found to be odd, and instead went for high fives. In the end I think it was a good experience for me because I got a taste of what many people of color go through by sometimes being the only person of color in a group of all white kids. I also found more love and respect for my brother after the incident. I looked up to his thoughts and believed that his ideas were like gold, because in my eyes he helped me get away from a terrible situation.

If my brother, Sam, were still in middle school with me when this was happening, things would be a lot different. I would have had someone to tell, who could actually do something about the situation. He had a lot of friends who were older- by extension, making them cooler, and more respected- and a lot bigger than the normal middle school student. By him not being there, it made me stronger, because I went through the situation and came out with better friends, ones who will stand up for me. Even though my brother was not there physically, he helped me emotionally and, because of how he cared to listen to my problems I have always felt comfortable talking to him and letting him know what is happening in my life, hoping he will have an answer for me, or a least a suggestion. My brother and my relationship has not always been so close, but after this event that happened to me, we have been very close.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with him during elementary school because of the way the school set up recess. 3^rd graders and lower were separated from the 4^th and 5^th graders, and because we are 2 years apart it made it so that we did not have many years of recess together, but is not to say that we never spent time together. I have a very close family, and we all get along really well. I was a pretty immature kid, and it really showed when I played my brother in basketball in our backyard after school. The main fights we got into were, were not actually fights. They were mostly me throwing a basketball at him after he would beat me in basketball. He was always about a foot taller than me, making it extremely hard to beat him, but because of my love for sports and even more, my love to win. He never usually hit me back because he was so much less emotional, and as much as a hate to admit it, a lot more mature. To show how little we got into fights, I only remember one serious one where he punched me so hard in my stomach after I was messing around with him, getting on his nerves to the point where I had trouble breathing because of it. It was a perfect shot that he gave me, it made me keel over on the bathroom floor, not able to speak because it would shorten the time that I was able to breathe.

Middle school came and I finally made my own solid group of friends. We called ourselves the three musketeers, and we were all so competitive with sports that sometimes it made it hard to enjoy each other, but because of all the practice I had with my brother, I was a little more mature and I could handle the situations a little better. I got to walk to and home from school everyday. We would always stop at the corner store- it was until this year that I realized it was called the Derby Market- and grab a soda or candy. I always loved the walk home, usually with some friends of both his and mine. There was not any world saving conversations or anything important at all, just fun. Usually there was an argument going on, whether or not it was about sports or movies or girls, it was always fun.

I graduated Middle School with a new group of friends, than I started, but my real excitement was that I was going to school with Sam again. That summer he took me to a party, and I met all his new friends, and other people that he wasn’t great friends with. I made a great name for myself, and started off my freshman year knowing a great amount of people, and even more people knew who I was just because of my brother. My brother had a huge impact on my High School life, for multiple reasons. One of them being that everyone who knew my brother automatically assumed that I was like him. I never had to win over anyones heart because he had done all the work already by being the amazing person that he is. It is somewhat hard going to high school after my brother, not for the reason that my teachers assumed I was smart because, well, my brother was not an amazing student. He got his work done and got good grades, but he definitely was not an Einstein. The difficulty of following Sam is that he is such a kind and generous person to everyone, that it made it hard for me because I am a more emotional person, and little things affect me more, or at least they used to, I have really worked on controlling my hasty reactions. Back to the difficulty of following Sam though, people got so surprised when I was more emotional, and they quickly decided that I was not like my brother. Another thing that happened as a result of my brother introducing me to so many older people is that I got a reputation for being cocky and kind of mean. I got the reputation because I would always be saying hey to upperclassmen, and people took that along with my emotional side, and put a label on me of being mean and cocky. When my brother left for college, to the University of Colorado at Boulder, I felt that the event that occurred in middle school, might repeat itself, but in a different form. For a while that summer I was so scared, and timid because I had a feeling something of that magnitude might happen again. Luckily, nothing like that happened, but I really did miss the great conversations about life that I had with my brother. He was always the first and only person I really talked to about the problems that were going on in my life. He was my free therapist, and I had to find a new one, but because of the friends I made in middle school after being choked everyday, I was able to find a group of people that I could talk to and who wouldn’t change their opinions of me after telling them these things in my life.

Senior year came rolling along in full speed, and although I am not quite done with it, even though my brain wants me to by making me have senior-itis everyday, I have started to do college applications. At the beginning of the year the University of Boulder was my number one choice. It is a beautiful place, and because of the beautiful people. I visited my brother Sam last year for a couple days, it is unbelievable the amount of good-looking people there are. It is as if all the people who were blessed with nice faces were brought to Boulder to add to the natural beauty of the place. The mountains, snow, sun, and great music, it is hard to think there is an alternate reason I would want to go there. I never thought that a huge sub-conscious reason for wanting to go there is to follow my brother. One day when my mom and I were having one of our many college talks- This one just happened to consist of my brother rather than my gpa, how I need to work on my essays or any other command that she felt was needed to be said -, she said to me, “I’m more worried about you going to the same college as Sam than I am worried about him.” That conversation was my inspiration for thinking about my relationship with my brother more, and my reflections, and this memoir helped me to realize that going to another college might be good for me, because I it will help me become independently strong and help me to figure out difficult situations. If I can do this, who knows, I might just come out with a great group of friends, or many other things.