I have a condition known as siblings. I started developing them at age seven. They're incurable, so I still have them.

There are three of them in total, but you know which one is the problem child - the middle one. You'd think with the three of them being only a year apart there might be less of a variance, but nah. It's him. He's the only one who grew up blond too, so we could tell.

When he was born my mom had to have a C-section because he'd managed to twist the umbilical order around his neck twice, with two knots in it - one of which was a square knot. The doctors were impressed. The rest of us sensed a bad omen.

When he was two years old he figured out how to climb bunk beds. Good bye, bunk bed.

When he was five years old he used to flirt with teenage girls at the library, mistaking their fawning over his adorable dimpled cheeks as actual interest (true story). He's the first of us to provide our mother grandkids. Not that we had a pool going; we knew he would be. Took the pressure off the rest of us at least.

The relationship between siblings can vary depending on the number of years between them. We're at eight, so unlike my other siblings - who sadly all popped out within a year of each other - I held a position of power over my little brother. At least for the first few years when I could lift him upside by his ankles until he behaved.

Thus I earned a bit of respect as the eldest, and my little bro would tag along after me like a puppy following a bulldog in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. Annoying, but endearing at times.

My family likes to hike in nature, so one Sunday we decided to go despite having heavy rains the week before. We piled up in the van, hyper tykes in the middle, grouchy/reluctant teenage me in the back. Standard roll out procedure.

When we got to the trail it hadn't exactly flooded, the dirt paths had just turned to mush. We had our boots on so not an issue. Following our folks we trudged through the mud like a caravan of ducklings with rain slickers on. Except for me. I was cool; I didn't need a rain slicker, I avoided mud like a sane person.

Not so of course for middle boy, who within five minutes had managed to stomp in every single blessed mud puddle he had found. His coat and pants coated in sludge, our mother simply shrugged and announced there were towels and fresh clothes in the van. Again, standard roll out procedure. He proceeded to hit the rest of the puddles all the way along the trail. Adorable, sure.

At one point he literally flopped onto his butt and made a mud angel, shrieking in delight as his arms swished about in the muck. Completely covered at this point, our poor mother's resolve started to falter. She gingerly pulled him up and set him aside on the path to try some damage control.

As I walked past my brother tried to hug me, all the better to share his new natural skin treatment. I pulled away, with a loud "tsk" as I pushed ahead on the trail. It was then that I uttered the fatal words:

"I am sooooo not related to you."

...and then I proceeded to slip, fall, and slide down the entire mud-covered hillside on my ass.

At the bottom I sat dazed for a moment. Our mother, after determining that I hadn't hurt myself, tried to stifle her laughter as she carefully navigated her way down.

My little brother - who might have felt slightly hurt a second ago at my harsh criticism - positively beamed with pride.

Rushing down the hill, he was the first to lean over me.

"You okay?"

"...yeah."

Biiiiiig grin. "So, does this mean we're related?"

I gave up.

He got to hug me.

When we got back to the parking lot the two of us waited obediently outside the van while our poor mother tried to mitigate our muddy mess. She hadn't actually brought extra clothes for the presumed mature teenager, and since I hadn't bothered to wear a jacket my clothes were completely soaked and caked in muck. I stripped what I could and wrapped a towel around myself while my little brother continued to grin at me in solidarity. Our other two siblings - now the good children - just shook their heads at us from inside the windows.

....

Maybe the middle child isn't the only problem one. Maybe they just bring the problem child out in all of us.

I would like to write this so that if I die and the coroner just slaps a COVID sticker on me and ships me to the morgue, someone will know the real reason I died. I love bleu cheese, especially the homemade kind that is made at this bar and grill near my house. We often have the containers in the fridge for awhile of the bleu cheese sauce that I adore so much, though we often get new ones and toss the old ones in typical, middle-class American fashion. This time that we ordered, I forgot to specify that I wanted bleu cheese eith my chicken (we do this so often that it didnt even dawn on me to ask). Luckily we had some from the week before.

I noticed the crack om the container when I first took it out but figured it was fine after a Whiff Test in typical poor college student fashion. I commenced to dig in, dipping chip after chip in the bleu cheese. It was going fine until a chip dredged up a film of mold. Now, bleu cheese is obviously all mold, but this was black mold lucking beneath the surface of typical bleu cheese mold. I obviously did not continue to eat it and threw the container away.

And now, several hours later, I feel death looming over me. I have googled all that one can google about eating black mold, and after temperature checks and drinking water and a healthy dose of prayer, I feel as though my asymptomatic misstep will kill me at any moment. In the event that this too shant not pass soon enough, you now know why I died.

I was very close to my grandparents at the time and may I say very young. They were on my father’s side of the family and had taken care of me when my parents were off to work. I love them both very much and was so attached to them (both physically and mentally). I would always grab hold of their arms/hands and it would always give me some type of comfort. Going back to the main point, my close family and relatives were all going to this festival (similar to Six Flags) and of course I went too. Then I got lost like a typical child I was. I saw someone at the time, they must have had a similar back to my grandpa because I went over to this stranger and started to grab hold of his arm and gave it a large bear hug! I didn’t realize it wasn’t actually him until I saw that his arm had in fact, tattoos at the top. There isn’t much to the story except that I didn’t get kidnapped and the stranger was very polite in accepting my apologies. If you remember me, hi?