You know, when my younger brother first came into my four-year old world, I didn't care what Mom and Dad said about loving him. I hated the son-of-a-puppy.
Not only did he take away all the attention that used to be lavished upon me, he also seemed to take great joy in destroying things I liked to play with. He was a crawling, drooling, Lincoln Log bulldozer.
I remember once he broke my prized Thunderbird Matchbox car by chewing through its plastic windshield. I was livid. What right did he have to break my toys? He was always doing this to me. I started yelling at him and calling him names -- till mom heard him wailing and caught a hold of me. Man, I hate spankings.
When all the bawling was done, mom said simply, "if you two don't learn to play together it's going to be a long life for us all." I hate it when she takes his side like that.
I've been trying to think what it was that allowed us to start behaving as brothers should. I know it wasn't the spankings that changed me -- they just made me more creative in my revenge. I think it was when that thing called language started working. I have to say it was cool to see a human being develop and replace that screaming pain in my butt. He started to change from the Lincoln Log bulldozer into a person who would smile at me. I never really gave him much reason to, but isn't that when a smile is most effective?
I started to change too. I stopped pretending to sleep when he cried at night in our room. I had become quite adept at rolling over and pretending I was asleep. Apathy is bliss, kind of. One time though instead of pretending to sleep and letting Mom and Dad take care of things; I got up and said, "Hey Brendan, I hear you. What's wrong?".
You know, it's pretty amazing where things have gone from there. Maybe we all come from too disparate a background to expect any miraculous turnarounds here; but it can't hurt to try to convert the polarity and anger coming from both extremes on this campus into a smile and an ear. Then maybe we can build some Lincoln Logs together.
Editor's Note: The Dartmouth's Editorial Board invited all six candidates for Student Assembly president to submit statements for publication on the Comment Page. In order to make the process fair, the candidates were asked to turn in their statements by 5 p.m. Sunday, April 7 and were limited to 800 words. The statements will appear in alphabetical order.
