Lazulu73

My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. My mother remarried when I was 5. Two years later my brother was born and I officially became the middle child. I also became the "inconvenience" that my step-dad now had to deal with. My little brother was his world... and I was a clumsy little jerk. I remember one day we were at a ball game and my step-dad was feeding my little brother peanuts and I asked if I could have some and my step-dad's reply was for me to get my own d@mn peanuts. I hated that little brat!!! Then he got old enough to talk and enjoy toys. He started getting G.I. Joes by the dozens... and I got to play with them! All of a sudden, the little brat became useful. I used him to collect all the Joes I wanted and I/we amassed an amazing assortment of those crazy little dudes. We had the hovercraft, the hydrofoil, the crazy oil platform thing... we had almost everything besides the U.S.S Flagg and the Tomcat plane. Although I initially used my brother to get what I wanted, the Joes brought us together. Through play with those crazy military kooks, we bonded and formed a life long friendship that brothers should have. Now he is grown with four children as an ordained minister and I am a soldier in the Army with 18 years of service. We still talk with fondness about those little soldiers and we sometimes come up with hypothetical scenarios of who would beat who in a fight. And we still curse our parents for throwing them all away... but they can not throw away our bond. G.I. Joe brought my brother and I together... YO JOE!