Coming to college, I was most worried about using a communal bathroom, but let me tell you, compared to sharing a bathroom with my two brothers, it’s practically the definition of sanitary. Sure, there’s hair everywhere — a rainbow of dyed and natural strands coating the shower walls and in the sink — but it’s nothing in comparison to the two slobs I live with at home.
Allow me to describe what I experienced. Pee. Pee everywhere. On top of the toilet seat. Underneath the toilet seat. On the ground. There’s so much pee that sometimes I wonder if any of it has actually made it into the bowl. But that’s not all! My brother has a very thick beard, and he doesn’t believe in cleaning up after himself when he shaves it. The tiny, thick shavings just sit in the sink and clog the drain. It is truly disgusting, and no matter how many times I ask him to clean it, he never does.
My brothers’ faults don’t stop with the dirty bathroom. They have woken me up countless times with drunk 2 a.m. phone calls begging for a ride home from a bar. Or how about the relentless teasing where they gang up on me? Growing up together, we were constantly fighting, which would usually end with me whining and pinching them.
I always wished I had a sister, but I think there’s something special about being raised with two boys that you don’t get with a sister. When I share stories with my friends, many of them can’t relate. I guess not everyone’s siblings throw “Axe bombs” into their rooms. For those of you who don’t know, Axe is cologne, popular among teenage boys, and my brothers used to duct tape the nozzle down, toss it into my room and run. It left my room reeking of teenage boy for days.
As angry as they make me, I love them, and there are some perks. They’re both older than me, which means they did everything first — middle school, high school, college — so I learned from their mistakes. And they made a lot of mistakes. So many mistakes that I don’t think anything I do could ever make my parents as angry at me as they have been at my brothers. In fact, nothing really fazes my parents anymore.
On those rides home from the bar, they usually drunkenly babble about girls or their friends, but occasionally the conversation reminds me why I love them. They’ll give me advice about college and work, they’ll threaten to kill anyone who hurts me and sometimes they’ll even say thank you and tell me they love me.
So, at the end of the day, if I had to decide between a clean bathroom and my brothers, I’d pick my brothers.
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