My Brother, My Hero, Charizard

My brother, Ian, is 8 years, 2 months, and 7 days older than me. Needless to say, when I was eight years old and he was seventeen, we had almost nothing in common. Pretty much the only time we would interact was when he would beat the crap out of me (and he would, quite often). I hated my brother. It was that simple. He was the worst part of my childhood, and made my life a daily living Hell. It was so bad, that he wasn't even allowed to be home alone with me (my parents always needed to get a babysitter to protect me).

But finally, the day I had been waiting my whole life for had come. September 1st, 2004, my brother left for college. I celebrated and danced and couldn't be more happy. But as time went on, I soon forgot about all the awful things my brother had done to me. It wasn't long before I actually missed him. I had all this free time on my hands now that I didn't have to deal with him, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Consequently, I thought about some of the cool things my brother did that maybe I could be better than him at. I learned to play the guitar, but I could tell that I wouldn't be better than him at that any time soon (we're pretty equal now and jam all the time). I remembered our uncle gave him a unicycle that he could never learn to ride. I spent most of my-ten-year old life learning to ride it (don't believe me? Here's a pic of me age 14 in the most ridiculous outfit riding one). But that still didn't fill his absence.

Oddly enough, the thing I missed most was something I never truly appreciated. Every night before bed, he would open my door and say two simple words: "Goodnight Pikachu." For those of you who don't know who Pikachu is, I feel bad for you. Pikachu is the most popular character from the hit show/game/fad, Pokémon. And every night I would respond, "Goodnight Charizard." Why, out of all the 151 pokémon that existed (at the time) did I pick to call my brother Charizard, the most powerful, awesome, fire-dragon (but not technically a dragon you poké-nerds who will correct me) pokémon to ever exist. I thought I hated my brother. But why would I bestow such an honor on him.

Although my brother and I did not have anything in common growing up, we both knew our Pokémon. One day I came home from baseball practice to find that my brother had been playing my Pokémon Gold version while I was gone. He had managed to evolve my Ledyba (ladybug pokemon) into what's call Ledian. I was so upset because I thought he somehow changed the name of the pokémon to be named after him (he is Ian, and the pokémon is Led-Ian). But after he showed me that it was for real, we both spent the night laughing about it and defeating gyms in the game together. Rare moments like that turned the Hell I was living in into something nice for a brief time.

My brother recently got married. I was lucky enough to be called his best-man. He got me a special jacket to wear as best man. Engraved inside: "Pikachu." That instantly made me remember all these moments we had growing up together, and all the nights we would say "Goodnight Pikachu," "Goodnight Charizard" to each other (and we still do every night we're in the same house!). Looking at the same question with older eyes, I see an obvious reason why my brother was Charizard.

• He's fierce and strong. Unfortunately I was often at the wrong end of his attacks, but I know if I or anyone else ever needed his support, he would fly in to save us.

• He is brave and heroic. He served our country in the army and was deployed active-duty in Afghanistan for a long time. He proudly fought for his country.

• Just like Ash (the main character from the show Pokémon) always counted on Charizard, his strongest pokémon, I find myself often depending on my brother.

My brother and I are moving apart from each other for the first time in a long time. I'm definitely going to miss him a lot, but I hope he sees this post and knows that I think he's a pretty cool guy.