Comfort Eating

I sorely miss my brother today... he keeps cropping into things I'm thinking about and making me wonder what he'd think or what he's up to. I'm very close to my brother, he's nine years my junior in age, ten years my senior in IQ and roughly the same as me in terms of giggling like an infant at juvenile jokes.

We've lived apart for about 6 years now and I've missed an awful lot of him growing up - obviously, I've spoken to him in the intervening years but it's not the same. My brother suffers from that interminable problem of being utter crap on a phone call. He literally cannot hold a conversation, despite being a skilled wordsmith in real life. It's like, without a face to look at, his whole process of formatting sentences falls apart. Perhaps he's a robot.

In recent months when we've spoken, I've noticed he seems to prepare a few questions as 'small talk' for the beginning of our conversations. But once those are used up he's a little stuck. I like these questions, they make me feel important and make me want to mess with him by giving the weirdest answer he'll be able to cope with.

I've got big plans with my little brother. I hesitate to use little there as he's nearly a foot taller than me already and has shoulders the width of my car. Not that you'd know it, as he makes full use of his teenage slouch to completely blend in to any social situation. We intend to move to America together when he's old enough to feed himself and hold his head up... possibly to San Francisco (because his favourite film is Princess Diaries - unless you're one of his friends reading this, in which case it's my favourite film. Ahem.) There, we can have a huge open topped car and be terribly exciting because we're pale and interesting.

I'm not sure why I miss him so much today. I'm working on a mathematical equation for happiness which roughly balances that number of brilliant people you need around you in order to stay sane against the masses of morons.

At the moment, it goes something like this -

Below 5 morons = 1 Brilliant to keep you on track

5 - 10 morons = 2-3 Brilliant people so you can pick and choose the style of brilliance that'll keep you going.

10 - 20 morons = 5 Brilliant people (so they can each be a member of the Friends cast and you can pick who you want to be).

20+ morons = you clearly have a sub-level day job and no amount of Brilliant people is going to make you feel perfect. Best to just gather as many people as you can.


My brother is not only a Brilliant person, but he's also very similar to me in a lot of ways, meaning that my perceived level of his brilliance shoots up due to inherent egotism.

His aim for future career is to be an oncologist so that he can do something about fixing cancer. For a 15 year old, I think it's impressive that he knows what an oncologist is, let alone that he wants to cure cancer instead of playing football.

I need to make the most of the years when he still thinks of me as cool... he'll be off to uni in a few years, and as a rugby, hockey and saxophone playing guy with blue eyes, dark hair and 3 older sisters who've beaten him into being a total ball of decency, he's going to be a catch. Let's just hope she's got banter...