The one thing that probably had the greatest impact on my life is my brother Loyd. For the first 2 1/2 years of my life, I was an only child, but I don't recall any of that. For as long as I can remember, I have had a younger brother. So this means I do not remember my mother being pregnant. I do not remember her and Dad going to the hospital. I do not remember them bringing this little baby home.
What you need to know about my brother and me is that we are similar in many ways, but different in so many more. One of our similarities is that we are both on the autism spectrum. I have Asperger Syndrome. He has ADHD. We were both adults before we found out about these conditions. Another is that we are both very intelligent individuals. And while we looked very different as children, the facial resemblance we now share with each other is pretty remarkable. People can definitely tell now that we are brothers. As for the differences, we can actually start at the beginning.
Before I was born, my parents were warned by relatives that the first night the baby is brought home from the hospital is the worst. They were told that I was going to cry all night long and they wouldn't be able to sooth me. Well, they brought me home and I slept through the night. They were told that they would have to get up and feed me in the middle of the night every single night. That also turned out not to be the case. I basically slept every night. Mom and Dad found themselves well-rested for being new parents.
2 1/2 years later, my brother was born. They thought they had this "parenting" thing down. They soon found out how wrong they were. Loyd SCREAMED all night long after coming home from the hospital. They knew then and there what everyone had warned them about before I was born. According to Mom and Dad, he spent a lot of time screaming. However, once he was able to talk, he stopped screaming.
(UPDATE: When I originally posted this article, it had just these four paragraphs above. When I reviewed it for re-posting, I realized that I did not include everything I had wanted to write on this topic. What follows is what I intended to include and what I thought I had included, but must have posted without properly reviewing it.)
Loyd had a typical sibling rivalry with me. It likely intensified from him constantly having to hear "Why can't you be more like Fayd?" ever since coming home from the hospital. He HATED being the youngest. As he put it, he felt like I was always leaving him behind. I would go play with children my age and he would be left behind. I went to school and he was left behind. As a result, he took it upon himself to try to outshine me in any given social setting, whether we were with family or friends.
For the most part, Loyd and I tried to be on our best behavior when there were other people around. However, Mom says there was one time when Grandma and Granddad Ogolon, Grandma Bend, Aunt Cind and good friends of my parents were at the house and something happened that made Loyd and me break out into a fight in the living room while everyone else was in the dining room. I actually don't remember the incident, but Aunt Cind recalled it very well, to the point that she could identify all of the guests who were there to witness it.
This rivalry also led to us tearing up our bathroom. At the time, we had a problem with running out of hot water in the morning, so we were constantly trying to get up earlier than the other to take a shower. This particular day, it all came to a head and we were trying to push and pull each other out of the bathroom. I grabbed a hold of the towel rack and Loyd started pulling on me. The towel rack came out of the wall! I figured I'd done enough damage already, so I just gave up and let Loyd take the bathroom. Mom told Dad that day she was going to buy a larger hot water heater and if he wasn't going to install it, she was going to hire someone to put it in for us. Dad wound up installing it himself, and we never had hot water problems after that.
One Easter, we were at a location in New Mexico referred to as "The Breaks" with my father's side of the family. Loyd was walking with cousin Grid and his much younger brother Mad was having trouble keeping up. Loyd suggested to Grid that they just leave Mad behind. Grid said, "No, that's my brother. You don't do that to your brother." Loyd was stunned by this. I certainly NEVER gave him that kind of consideration. He felt like this was how brothers were supposed to treat each other and I was just giving him the short end of the stick all the time.
(But I want to be clear about something: There was an 8-year age difference between Grid and Mad. Grid probably felt more like he had to protect his brother. In addition, Grid was three years younger than his older brother Wend, who likely left him behind all the time when they were growing up. This probably hurt Grid and he made a conscious decision to never do that to Mad.)
I always wondered how different my life would have been if Loyd had never been born and I remained an only child. For starters, I would probably have no social skills whatsoever. I would have stayed inside my shell and it would have taken my parents years to figure out something was wrong with me. But there's no getting around it: My parents were bound and determined to have a full family.
Today, Loyd and I have a comfortable and friendly relationship, even though we don't get to see each other that much. He's apologized for the things he's done to me and I've apologized to him. And now that I'm getting older, he doesn't seem to mind being the youngest.
(I've shared the video below in a separate post. Because it's on the same subject and because I've added so much new material to this article anyway, I'm including it here as well.)
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