My Other Brother Ryan

Today is my other brother Ryan’s birthday. Prepare yourself.

Yes, I have two brothers named Ryan. If you want to get all silly, my first name was Brandon for about three weeks but swapped with my middle name, Cory, due to a family controversy over who had the name picked out, and I have another brother named Brandon. Yes, my family is like that. Okay, so technically this Ryan and his brother Brandon are my stepbrothers, but really, they were 1 and 3 when our dad started dating their mom.

So to clarify, we the kids decided there needed to be a way to distinguish between the two Ryan’s and thus came up with a simple plan of referring to the older one as Big Ryan and the younger one as Little Ryan. Well, Big Ryan didn’t like being called that anymore, so Little Ryan decided to rename himself Cheese Grater. Seriously, I couldn’t even try to make that one up. His reasoning? He doesn’t just cut the cheese, he constantly farts in a steady stream of short bursts. We the Children shortened it to Cheese. People still call him that. And sadly, my brother Ryan was still called Big Ryan by more and more people, some of whom didn’t even know there was a Little Ryan.

The two Ryan’s are a lot alike. He’s also an adventurous, risk taking, hilarious individual. The main difference was that growing up, he had a blankie. Yes, Ryan, I’m bringing up that dingy yellow blanket you used to sleep with. What’s more, he called it by its Vietnamese name, mền , which, yes, sounds exactly like it’s spelled. He would cry if he couldn’t find his mền to sleep with. We the Children never failed to find a way to tease him about that. Or the fact that in order to fall asleep, he’d bang his head on his pillow, nose down, for twenty minutes. Let me tell you how much fun that was to be on the bottom bunk!

Little Ryan was, and still is, fairly athletic. Soccer, wrestling, even surprisingly basketball he was good at. I say surprisingly because the kid was tiny. Still is tiny. Okay, so short with a wrestler’s build is more accurate. Some of my favorite memories of him are just the two of us playing what we called Roller Ball where we would play one-on-one basketball in our rollerblades. So much fun! Ah, how I miss those days.

But alas, he’s all grown now, and while I can’t say he still sleeps with his mền, I can say that he is far more independent than I would’ve thought him to be. Happy Birthday, Ryan! I hope your day is filled with amazing things, and the year ahead brings you nothing but happiness! And because I’m evil, and this video never seems to get old, here’s that wonderful recording of you dancing to Bobby Brown’s Ain’t Nobody Humpin’ Around!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zZl1d0Eohmw