Thread by @wmcarterelliott

I was the youngest, so my brothers thought of me as "the baby" far beyond the term being appropriate.

I was the spitting image of my father. Unfortunately, he didn't need a drink to reign hell on his wife and kids. I was a constant reminder to my mother of her biggest mistake.

https://twitter.com/wmcarterelliott/status/1331759458448338946

Let's pretend that I explained why my childhood was hellish. My child brain assumed that my childishness was the problem, and figured I needed to get as smart as my older brothers to escape what I felt.

I put more effort into learning than most.

Making the problem worse for all

https://twitter.com/wmcarterelliott/status/1331760898621415426

My brothers were between avg and smart. My oldest brother had talents, the middle brother had *ALL* the high school girls throwing themselves at him (jock), and #3 was the smartest in the family.

Until I caught up.

#2 was keenly aware of being the least sharp of the four, and

became a recluse, in the literal sense. He lives 7hrs from the nearest airport.

Not by accident.

#1 was kicked out of High School, #2 made it to college, and it appears he figured he'd won the sibling rivalry by lasting his freshman year before flunking-out. #3 made it to his sophomore year before drugs stole his soul.

I actually liked college, mainly b/c I was away fm home

Make that "home". My presence was tolerated (to a point).

I hadn't quite grasped the whole situation, and nobody called to congratulate me on graduating, nor on getting accepted to graduate school.

I recently tried having a conversation with #2 and he said that I only went to

grad school to rub his nose in the fact that he hadn't finished his degree.

!

Not even close. I had the SDI Architecture task dropped in my lap, and my boss pointed out that he'd have preferred a PhD in that role (than a guy with a BS).

Local college was UCSB (better than avg)

so off I went (nights). Days were filled with trying to conjure a way to win a nuclear war with the USSR (shooting down 22,000 hydrogen bombs).

If I'd scored a 99 on that effort, we'd have lost 220 cities.

Skipping a few movies ahead, I'm retired and my #2 brother is dying.

He first mentioned that he had throat cancer. I'm one click away from the same, so I did some research on "orphan- cures" and found several.

Good news, right?

Apparently, not if the cure comes from me.

He's called me a fascist more often than I can count. (He's a Socialist.)

My talented #1 brother was nearly prosecuted for Treason when he was in the Army, but his "hijinks" were relatively harmless and forgiven. His first move after the Army was to start his own motorcycle gang, like the Hell's Angels, but in St Louis. Racism is part of the culture.

So while he was picking fights with strangers over nothing, his GF Sherry taught him how to play guitar.

He saw a Nazi emblem and tattooed it on his arm. (He got the Swastika backwards.) It didn't occur to him that his GF's father had survived Auschwitz.

He likes Trump.

#3 brother recovered and became a lawyer. I wish I could tell you about how he righted some miscarriage of Justice, but he's the lawyer that you call when you're caught driving drunk or beating your wife.

Not relevant. Sorry. The main point is that this Trump stress split us up.

It was merely a dysfunctional family, but toss-in "Fake News" from Trump, PUTIN, and Bannon, and you end up with an ex-jock/Socialist who'd rather die than accept the advice from the fmr Dir of BioMed R&D (post Soviet collapse, I switched to looking for cures for diseases)...

because it'd make him feel indebted to the youngest sibling, the fascist who helped design Stealth and SDI, which is (wrongly) blamed for the collapse of his belovéd Soviet Union.

He'd rather die than accept that I wasn't the fascist/Capitalist/smart-ass he resented all my life.

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