Breaking the law and peeing on tadpoles

If you had told me in high school that my younger brother and I would turn out to be good friends later in life, I’d have informed you that there was a screw loose in your head. Today, I eat my words.

During our formative years, calling us mortal enemies might have been an overstatement, but slightly.

We were constantly battling.

Pulling hair, stealing Legos, laughing when the other crashed his bike, and trying to get each other in trouble with our parents.

Now, we didn’t hate each other or anything… Just suffered major sibling animosity.

So, after moving half way across the country for eight years, going to school, starting a few businesses, marrying, and having a family, I was not expecting to move back close to my brother and fall into what has become one of easiest and most natural friendships in my life.

Come to find out, he might as well be my twin.

I mean, we like the same foods (prepared the same way), we have similar hobbies, we have matching skills in lots of areas, we like lots of the same music.

Despite our vastly differant occupations, we are both hightly skilled, perfectionists, who love our work.

In fact, even our significant others are very similar… It’s almost creepy.

All of that to bring me to today.

Today, is when all of this realization about my brother and I set in. My wife, my son, his girlfriend, and I all hopped in his car and he drove us out to a secluded river to go hiking.

Only problem was the river is off limits to the public. We parked illegally, trespassed illegally, and hiked illegally.

It was awesome. One of the few places we can go hiking where we live and be totally alone with nature.

While there, my brother caught no fewer than four living creatures including a snake, a lizard, craw dads, and some hugemongeous tadpoles.

While my brother was in the water chasing the tadpoles, my toddler son stripped naked to get in the water… But before doing so, thought it would be a good idea to pee into the water where my brother was standing.

So my brother turn around to see my son peeing downstream into the water he and the tadpoles are in.

Thus, breaking the law and peeing on tadpoles with my family made me realize that my brother has become one of my closest friends in adulthood.