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As much as I want this blog to be informative about disabilities, I figured a more light-hearted post would be a nice change up.

In this post, I will share some funny stories about my brother who has Down syndrome. These aren’t meant to embarrass him or to be mean spirited. Sharing these stories is simply to show how our relationship as twin brother and sister as well as our family dynamic is just as typical as any other.

This first story took place just this very morning:

I was on the phone with my brother and we were just catching up talking about our plans for the day and I told him I had some chores to do around my apartment like laundry and packing for an upcoming move. He told me he was proud of me for doing chores. I asked if he was going to do any chores for our mother today and he replied, “Probably not.” And if that doesn’t encompass his personality perfectly, I don’t know what does.

This one is from our childhood and captures the brother/sister relationship perfectly:

As typical siblings do, my brother didn’t always want to hang out with me when it was just the two of us. But when I had a friend come over, suddenly he wanted all my attention, which I did not want to give him because I was too busy with my friend. He would drive me insane! He felt like once a friend came over it was time for show and tell. He would pop in my room over and over to show us a toy or tell us a joke and me, being the mean sister I was, did not want him interrupting my girl time. On one occasion, when annoying us by interrupting valuable friend time proved fruitless, he decided to steal some of my Barbies and my mother caught him mid-act of getting ready to throw them at the top of his closet. His logic was pretty sound if you ask me, get rid of public enemy number one: Barbie, and then we would be forced to play with him. I was not happy of course, but now his little evil genius ways make me laugh.

This last story is from a family vacation from when we were about age 10 and is still one of my favorite stories:

On a family vacation to Tennessee, we had planned to attend a magic show. One thing you need to know is that my brother has two fears: birds and bad weather. The billboard for this magic show had a bird on it along with various other animals that would be featured in the show. My brother being terrified of birds made a huge fuss about not wanting to go. My parents had already bought the tickets and we weren’t going to let him ruin a good time, so my parents, like any other parents, swore up and down that there weren’t going to be any birds so he would cooperate. Well of course the final act of the show included a bird (a duck or a goose? I don’t remember) and he had a fit and my mother took him to the lobby until it was done. And remember that other thing he’s afraid of? Bad weather. Well, we also sort of assured him it wasn’t going to rain, so naturally, when we went to leave it started pouring outside. Once we were all in the car, my brother told our dad (because of course everything is always Dad’s fault), “You lie like a bug!” We all started laughing and he was so angry, even more so because we were laughing. Instead of saying, “You lie like a rug” he said “bug” which we thought was so funny because he really thought that he had the right phrasing and said it with so much vigor that we couldn’t help but laugh. He was right about the lying though, there was a bird in the show and it did rain. Even though it wasn’t funny to him at the time, now my brother brings it up as a funny memory from that vacation.

I hope these light, cutesy stories bring a little smile to your day and we can all take a look back and laugh at the silly moments.

Happy Friday!