My Brother

My Mom named him Danny after the singer/actor Danny Kaye.  Two and a half years older than me, I thought he was the greatest thing ever.  I was never happier than when he let me participate in whatever it was he was doing at the time.

As older brothers often do, he delighted in teasing me.  If  he came up with a clever idea, he'd always let me try it first to work the bugs out.  If things went wrong, he'd always say, "I'll give you a quarter if you don't tell Dad".  I wouldn't have told on him anyway because I didn't want him to stop letting me hang out with him; the quarters were just a bonus.

I was probably 11 and Danny asked me if I wanted to try out the parachute he just made.  A parachute?!?  WOW!  Of course I wanted to try it out.  No kid I ever knew had flown in a parachute (do you fly in a parachute?...jump?...sail?) and I was going to be the first!  We proceeded out to the barn where he had one of Mom's sheets with rope tied to the four corners.  He tied the ropes securely around my waist and instructed me to climb up the ladder in the barn to the highest point.  When I reached the top he told me to hold the parachute out and jump into the bales of hay about 40 feet below. 

Now, I was not the least bit afraid.  After all, this was my brother.  He had invented this parachute and he was letting me take the maiden flight, what an honor!  I stepped to the edge, held the ends of the sheet in both hands and jumped off; fully expecting to float gracefully down to Danny waiting below.  Instead I dropped like a rock and ended up falling head first with my head stuck between two bales of hay.

I think I deserved two quarters that day.