Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup --
Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup

Something that came into my mind (don't give it too much weight): whenever I'm around my brother William, I feel stupid. Whenever I'm around my brother Robert, I feel broken. I always idolized both of them -- they're two of the coolest hu-mans I've ever met -- but since I was so much younger, I had an excuse whenever I didn't understand something or was slower or sloppier than they were. But, like, William, to start with, always looked out for me. He sent me wonderful mind puzzles and talked with me about grown-up stuff and then he turned into a kid like me and we shot holes in paper drawings of cafeteria food and ate Cap'n Crunch in my bunk bed. I always knew that he thought I was someone who'd really grow up to be... I dunno. Worthy. But I was a kid, so I could just be who I was. Now I'm supposed to be a grownup. I'm supposed to have caught up and gotten smart. I get all his jokes now, sure, but I can't talk the right way in front of him -- we were having this conversation last month about philosophy and math and my brain seized up. I was just mouthing these banal, stuttering, inarticulate empty-headed phrases, trying to say something that meant something, and nothing came out. I had been talking some of the same stuff over with my dad the night before, and that was wonderful, like one of the best SJC seminars; we both said what occurred to us, and then we prized the truth out of it together, but when I'm with William... I don't know why. I feel like he's trusted me to grow up like him, quick and sharp and logical, and I'm still like the fuzzy-headed snotnose I've been since I was six. Robert, on the other hand, knows people. When I was really young, and he'd just done a marvelous trick on my nephew Michael, getting him to do something or other without realizing he'd been coerced into it, I said to Robert, "When I'm older, I want to take Develelopmental Psychology like you did, so I can understand how kids think, too." And he said, "Are you kidding? I've always known this stuff. I didn't need a class to teach me." I felt abashed. If I couldn't learn it, I guess that means I'll never know it. Robert always knows whats in all of our heads and what the solution is, even if it's tricky and complicated and bound up in so much other nonsense. He gives me these marvelous speeches about how we work, and all I can do is sit there with it spreading over my brain and assent to the truth of it. I've never been able to say anything to him that made him go, "Oh! You're right. I didn't see it before." I'm still the kid in the dunce cap, except it's the subtler stuff and not the analytical that I'm missing. I guess it's just ego, or partly just ego, any way. But part of it is that I want to be like them, as good as them. Both of them, or either of them -- I'd be satisfied. Instead, I just sit and listen like a codfish, and know that I'm the kid brat that'll never catch up. They both love me and hang out with me and talk to me. I don't want to disappoint them by being less than they've always thought I would be. _ respond?