This past week was spring break for a lot of high schoolers, including my little brother Johnny. The last thing I thought he would have wanted to do was to come and stay with me for a few days, but—alas—when I asked him he said he wanted to come down. This was surprising since my whole family is composed of homebodies, with my sister being the only pata caliente (literally, “hot foot,” or someone who just has to move around or travel). Apart from spending time with him, I really wanted him to get a taste of what college will be like, especially since he is graduating high school next month and will be going to college in the fall.
Of course, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the day he got here one thing after the other went wrong. The Bolt bus ran late, biting into my lab time. During the 15-minute delay I stood outside in the pouring rain and got soaked. Then, when he called telling me he had arrived, I realized the bus stop had been moved to a different avenue, so then we were both soaked and had to rush to campus. Unfortunately, this didn’t leave time for me to drop him off at my place so I left him in the Gilman atrium, and he later complained to me that he was literally shivering cold while I was gone. Walking to my next class was worse than when we got in, since it was raining even harder than before. Fast forward three hours and we were finally home and—what do you know—my brother wasn’t feeling well. I felt horrible, so I blamed the damn rain and the all of the indoor air conditioning, but it turned out he decided to eat some weird tasting mushroom pizza the day before.
Luckily, the next day he felt brand new. It was like something clicked and we reverted back to what we usually do when we’re home. He lounged on my bed all day, having his fill of Adventure Time while I sat at my desk trying to be productive. Every so often I would watch an episode and he would make a big stink about having to move over and how I only barely watch one episode. All my attempts at getting him to get outside were fruitless—until I mentioned Chipotle. That was the one time he left, apart from the last day he was here when I had managed to coerce him into going to DC to see the White House.
All in all, my little brother’s break turned out to be a break for me too since his presence was constantly known, which meant that we were either cracking jokes or hurling insults at each other. But the worst part of any visit from someone you love is always when it ends, when you have to watch the person leave and when you go back home and there is no one complaining about their burrito being cold and how the chicken tastes like steak.
