Big Friendly Vegan

[More stuff I wrote in 2002.]

Throughout history, there have been many great conflicts: David versus Goliath, Muhammad Ali versus Smokin' Joe Frazier, Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant.

All of these conflicts pale into insignificance when compared to the age old struggle between two diametrically opposite forces. I'm not talking about good versus evil here. Such notions are trivial by comparison.

I'm talking brother versus brother.

Ever since Kane and Able, brothers have been fiercely competitive. My brother and I are no exception. While we had all the love our parents had to give and as many advantages as each other, the inherent drive to compete has always landed us in interesting situations.

Picture this... my brother and I are playing with our collection of Lego blocks. My brother challenges me to a demolition derby, of sorts. He proposes that we build cars out of Lego, go into the hallway (which has nice wooden floors) and see which car stands up better in a series of head on collisions. The last car left rolling wins. Needless to say, the challenge was accepted.

We each take some Lego and go off to construct our Monster Machines. My car was a masterpiece of Lego engineering. Not only did it have a spacious interior that could seat four Lego men in comfort, it also had a hinged boot so that the Lego men could store their belongings (we had a lot of space Lego and the Lego spacemen had to have somewhere to put their helmets and air tanks). With a great deal of pride, and a sense of victory, I proceeded to the joust in the hallway.

My brother took his sweet time getting to our meeting. The repeated knocking (and kicking) at his door was met with a calm, "Almost there". That should have been my first warning - his calm acceptance of my badgering.

Finally, however, he emerged with a box containing his Lego creation. I walked to my end of the hallway with nervous glances at the box. I was right to be worried.

From the box he brought forth the mother of all demolition vehicles. Essentially it was a brick made out of Lego blocks, with a set of wheels stuck to the bottom. It was about double the size of my little car and the only concession to a car-like appearance was a token window attached to the front surface.

If my Lego men could see out of their little painted eyes, then their little painted pants may have become a little more painted. They were on their way to the slaughter and nothing could be done about it. The gauntlet had been thrown down and I had accepted the challenge.

The aftermath looked like Lego Hell… all of those blocks strewn over the hallway; the decapitated heads, still smiling; the horrible, horrible pearls of laughter…

Flash forward...

Picture this... I am playing with my little green and brown army set. The little brown army was taking quite a pounding from the cannons of the little green army. You see, this army set came with a pair of little cannons (why American Civil War style cannons were included in a WW2 army set, I don't know) which accepted tiny little plastic cannon balls as ammunition; exactly the type of thing that would be banned for safety reasons by almost every government in the world these days.

We had quickly lost the little balls, but had found that matchsticks could be loaded into the front of the cannon and shot with much more effect! I loved to set up the little army men and then use the cannons to fire matchsticks (unlit Mum, honest) at them until there wasn't a man left standing.

On this particular occasion, I was struck with a burst of inspiration. I set up both the brown and green armies in the hallway and invited my brother in for a little war play. One cannon and a box of matches each (all of which had been previously "deactivated"). The gauntlet had again been thrown.

We began firing and watched as the front ranks on both sides fell, but my rear guard was standing up to the barrage with a lot more ability than my brother's. In short order, his brown army lay strewn across the battlefield while the majority of my green army stood proudly in plastic victory.

Only when the brown army's helicopter "flew" across no-mans land in a suicide attack was it revealed that the green army had a technological advantage - plasticine.

I had painstakingly and methodically stuck a large portion of my soldiers to the floor, sacrificing a few small souls for the sake of the deception. The price they paid will never be forgotten.

Flash forward...

Picture this... I am sitting watching television while my brother is in the garage working on his bike. He has just finished greasing a bearing and walks into the house with his middle finger extended and covered in thick brown grease.

I see him standing in the doorway as such and ask him what he has been doing, to which he replies, "I was just checking the dog for worms".

It was such an improbable story, yet for a fraction of a second, I believed it... and he knew it. In that briefest of moments, with something as simple as a finger covered in grease, he had scored a decisive victory.

In the past (almost) thirty years, my brother and I have had many such encounters. Sometimes he wins, sometimes I do. We will never stop and we don't keep score.

The competition between my brother and I has increased our creativity and inventiveness, developed our skills and has taught us to have a sense of humour. Without it, we would have been much less. I feel for people unlucky enough to not have a brother, in the same way I was jealous of my sister for having two brothers while I only had one.

The word brotherhood is often used to describe a positive and supporting relationship between people, countries or cultures. The stories I have told here, strange as it may seem, are also manifestations of that theme. Men understand this contradiction instinctively.

To put it simply, my brother is my favourite foe.