Notes

My brother is the most influential person in my life. His name is Wade, and he is 21 years old, leaving a 4 year gap in between the two of us. Most siblings are always quarreling, and never do anything together. My brother and I are most definitely not like that, we do everything together. Throughout my life I have modeled to be more like him, he is not only my older brother but my peer and my role model. When I was 5, I would follow my brother around everywhere, I was the pesky younger brother. I felt the brunt of many a cruel joke that my brother and his friends would play on me, but throughout all of these jokes I knew they only did it in fun and I enjoyed it.
I was exposed to many things I should not have been by hanging out with my brother and his friends, but this also helped me to mature earlier. There is a phase in the younger years of my generation's lives when it is considered cool to smoke. At the age of 14 I was tempted by friends to smoke, but since I had been with my brother when he was tempted to smoke I knew it would be a bad decision to even try. Watching my brothers go through the trials of life has helped me to resist certain temptations that I otherwise might have gotten sucked into. I was able to see the mistakes he made and avoid those decisions in my life.
My brother and I are still very close, but now he is engaged. We don't do everything together anymore; he has his own career and hopes to start a family of his own. The drive to better myself that he put in me as a young child still drives me to be a better person. I still model myself after my brother because he is the greatest person in the world in my eyes. I will always remember the wrestling matches as a child that I got terribly beat at, and the times when he would make me do stupid stuff just so his friends could laugh at me. These things may seem like something I would look back at and be bitter about, but I will always value the lessons in life that Wade taught me.