An older brother’s job is to protect his younger brother or sister. That’s what I’d always been told by my parents, and that’s what I’d seen. My older brother protected me.

Jason wasn’t a fighter — back then, I think it would be fair to call him a shy boy. But he was athletic and strong, and older, and he defended me whenever I needed defending. I was short and, for a time, when I was still in elementary school, I was sensitive about it. My brother knew this. One time this bigger, older kid bullied me at Peter Pan, the local arcade, and called me a shrimp because I wouldn’t give up my spot to let him play the game I was playing, and my brother stepped in. They were about the same age and size. Jason told the kid to leave me alone and not to tease me. The kid didn’t like being told what to do, and called me a shrimp again, and that was enough to send the both of them rolling around on the ground. It was a real dust-up. Finally, an adult pulled them apart and the other kid was kicked out of the place for starting it. It wasn’t life and death or anything, but I always remembered it, and the other times he never hesitated to stick up for me.

I was just as protective of my younger sister, Amy. It was high drama the time I threatened to break an eight-year-old boy’s legs because he wouldn’t stop pushing my sister, who was seven. She’d told my parents that this kid, who towered over her, was pushing her every day and teasing her. It wasn’t gentle “he-probably-just-has-a-crush-on-you” pushes. He really shoved her around. When a phone call to the boy’s mother from my mother did no good, my father told me that I was to make it very clear to this boy that his pushing days were over. At that age, I had a hell of a temper. I might have been the shortest kid in the class, in nearly the whole fourth grade, but I didn’t get picked on much. Maybe it was my sparkling personality, my disarming humor and quick wit, but it probably also had something to do with my penchant for punching other kids in the face at the least provocation. I didn’t have to hit the second-grade boy. He left Amy alone after our little talk. I’m sure he moved on to shoving a different girl who didn’t have older brothers.

Like my brother, I took my duty seriously. But when the stakes were higher, when it wasn’t just a kid shoving, but something more serious, I failed. I don’t remember what age we were, but I couldn’t have been fourteen yet. There’s no way the old man would’ve tried it if I was. Not that I was a big or imposing fourteen-year-old, but by fourteen, we would have been too much of a threat. I had a friend with me at the movie theater, but I don’t remember which one. Maybe Danny. I don’t remember what movie it was, either. For some reason, Superman III suggests itself. I would ask my sister what movie it was, but she didn’t seem thrilled that I was writing about this in the first place — not that she’s traumatized by any of it nearly twenty-five years later. Still, why ask her to revisit an unpleasant memory? Sure, some of the details are fuzzy. Years do that. But I guess that I was twelve, which would mean my sister was nine. Those are the important details.

And this: We were in the theater, watching Superman III, Danny, me, and Amy, sitting in that order. An old man was sitting next to my sister. Halfway through the movie, my sister said she wanted to leave. She was very upset. So we left. It was a few minutes after we left the theater and were walking home before she would say what was bothering her. The old man, that sick fuck, had taken out his penis and was playing with it, and was trying to get my sister’s attention, trying to make eye contact, so she would see what he was doing. All while sitting right next to her and two seats down from me.

We didn’t have cell phones back then, and were already almost home. When we got back to my house, we told my mother, who rushed with all of us back to the movie theater. The manager was sorry, and offered us free tickets to see the movie again, which was starting in a few minutes. I learned that one of our mistakes was sitting my sister on the end. My mother said she should have been in the middle, where it was safer. And that’s where Amy sat that afternoon, between me and Danny, while we again watched Superman III.

The old man was gone by then, of course. I can still see his face today, a white-haired, mostly bald, hunched-over old man with a big nose. Everyone seems so old to a twelve-year-old. Maybe he was seventy. An old seventy. He’s probably dead now, dead maybe a decade or two. Who knows what he had done, what he went on to do, whether he ever went beyond exposing himself and molested some little girl somewhere?

That day, I wasn’t thinking of protecting society or other potential victims or anything else. I was a twelve-year-old, thinking of my sister, and the old man. I sat there in the dark of the theater and wished desperately that he would come back. Before leaving my house to return to the theater, I’d grabbed my pocketknife. It didn’t have more than a three-inch blade, but it was sharp, and I hardly paid attention to the movie, just fingered the knife the whole time and wished for the man to come back, so I could stab him in the stomach. I wanted to stab him. If he had come back, I would have stabbed him. But he never came back, so I never did.

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Tags: reflections & recollections by Scott Stein // 3 Comments »