What my brothers taught me

I have two brothers: Ting ang Aboy, both are older than me. Both took care of me when I was a kid. I never got along with my sisters and I didn't mind.

My eldest sibling, Ting, taught me logic. He was the one who encouraged me to read. He introduced me to Silas Marner and Jaws and a book that explains the possibility of Aliens being the Egyptian gods, and of the pyramids being creations of intelligent alien life. He was the one who encouraged me to always read the encyclopedia if there are things that I do not understand. I bet if we had internet then he will teach me how to google things up. He showed me what a real battery looks like inside. He even cut himself in the process.

He taught me how to count and budget my money. I remember one of his brilliant ideas: He used a panel of the wall as his coin bank. When the panel became full of 1peso coins he opened it and I was amazed to see hundreds of coins guching from the wall! He taught me how to count this way. He told me to pile up the coins by ten. Then he taught me to count by tens. When I got tired of that he taught me multiplication. He told me to stack the coins by ten then count the stacks. And multiply the number of stacks by ten. After counting his coins he gave me 100pesos of it and put it in a glass bottle. He said I can use it when we go to the zoo.

My other brother, Aboy, was the third in the brood. He taught me how to have fun. How to laugh. How to play. He would always make elastic guns for me. It was quite simple: He would get a piece of wood, tie a clothespin at the end; at the other end he would put a rubber band. He would ask me to fold pieces of paper to make “bullets”. I would use the gun with my toy soldiers or with cans and it really works.

This brother of mine can make games out of anything. I remember that he collects soda bottle caps. And what does he do? He lines them up like a platoons (of course all the Pepsi caps together and all the Coke caps together and so on). Then he gets three or so bottle caps each from both parties, shakes them in his hands and drops them. The bottle caps that land upturned will be eliminated. The platoon with the most survivors win! Imagine that waging a cola war without knowing it!

Both of them like playing silly games with us. Ting would collect all his bus tickets and tie them in a wad like money. Aboy would get his toy guns and we would play cops and robbers. I remember Kuya Aboy and I ran around two blocks to get away from the cops (Kuya Ting and my sister). It was fun. It was awesome.

Now I guess you can say that you know where I got my quirks. Well, you're right I got some of them from my dear brothers. I never tell them how much I appreciate them or that I love them. But they know it, I'm sure.