Brother Stories

Last night, I decided to make dumplings to freeze and have on hand (pasta and tomato sauce was getting boring). I implored brother to help me. After a bit of wheedling, he finally obliged. Since my brother has a hard time seeing, he'd frequently put too much or too little filling on the wrapper, and subsequently use his touch senses rather than a combination of touch and sight to seal the wrapper. He'd close his eyes and just feel and pinch the edges, often spending so much time pinching it it looked more like ravioli than dumplings. Regardless, it was faster filling dumplings with him than doing it by my lonesome self. We chugged through the filling, and after about half of the filling was gone (about 20 minutes), my dad joined in. Brother declared that he was now done making dumplings now that my father had joined, which I was against as his dumpling skills, however lethargically slow, were getting better and making dumplings was even better with 3 people. My brother protested, saying that dad was faster anyway and that he was so slow we didn't need him. I accused him of self-doubt with his abilities, of believing himself to be useless. He denied this, but when pressed had no explanation for me as to why he said such a statement. I made him sit back down and continue filling dumplings.

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I woke up today to my brother coming home from the Boys and Girls Club (woken up 3 times by phone calls from people). When I went to the kitchen I saw him unpacking orange juice, and noticed that he bought two bottles of Simply Orange orange juice. I asked him why he wanted to buy such expensive and fancy juice and if it was even on sale. He told me the one that was on sale was the "gross-tasting" brand, so he bought the one he knew would taste good.