Love the Life you Live

Only 192 days until my baby brother turns 21. I cannot believe how fast time flies. When I was younger, instead of playing with dolls or watching Rugrats, I would spend my time using my Easy Bake Oven and helping my mom mop the floors or beg my dad to let me iron his work shirts. Needless to say I was in a hurry to grow up. I was born a month early and my parents say that I have been on the fast track ever since.  I remember having a conversation with my father, when I was about 12, telling him that I could not wait until I was 25, married with kids and had my own life. I thought that day would never come and at the young age of 12 it seemed so far away. So as I pouted to my father about wanting to grow up faster he assured me that day would come soon enough and then I would be pouting to him again that I wish I could go back in time and be young again! Since I am stubborn, hard headed and hardly ever wrong, I will not admit that my father's predictions are at all correct but I will say that it sure did go by fast! Now that my brother is going to be an 'adult,' it really makes me feel old! I still look at him as though he is my little baby brother in which I would dress up and style his hair in bow barrettes as he sat in his crib patiently waiting for the torture to be over. Now this little boy has all of a sudden grown out of his crib and up to the bar!!

Most 20 year olds look forward to their 21st birthday so that they can go out with all of their friends, get a giant Margherita, and end up with their head in a toilet bowl later. If only you knew my brother because this is the last thing on earth that he would want to be participating in on his 21st birthday. When I asked him what he wanted to do his reply was just simply to see his girlfriend. And honestly, he would be completely content with just spending the day doing just that. I am not sure I have ever run into anyone else that could say they just wanted to hang out with their girlfriend on their 21st birthday but that is why my brother is so great! I admire his ability to just enjoy the simple things in life! Cole doesn't need designer clothes, in fact he doesn't even care what he wears as long as the tag doesn't itch his skin. He doesn't care nor judge anyone based on their appearance, he still has a velcro wallet in which he doesn't care if it impresses his girlfriend or not. His ideal day would involve waking up to chocolate chip pancakes, having the basement big screen t.v. to himself all day long to watch Cartoon Network or beat another board on Call of Duty Black Ops and then have someone bring him pizza whenever his stomach feels the need to eat again. I wish that while my parents reproduced that they had given me this gene! I wonder if we were programmed with the ability or inability to enjoy simplicity or if it's our environment that makes us this way? Cole is in a position that he could certainly enjoy the finer things in life but that's not what would make him happy. Give him a kind, loving girlfriend, a roof over his head, a car that has four wheels and a t.v. big enough for him to play my dad in Gears of War and he would be completely content!

Imagine what life would be like if there were more people with my brothers mentality? If the only importance in life was the people in our life instead of the things in our life? If we could all find the goodness inside others instead of the beauty that they mask on the outside? Imagine a world where Kenneth Cole watches didn't hold any value and Christian Louboutin shoes were just as valuable as the toll booth change from Syracuse to Albany? I applaud my brother for he has given me hope that there has to be others out there like him and that one day they will make us all see how greedy we really are and prove to us how much the simple things in life can mean so much!!