My brother and I are less than a year and a half apart in age.  This has made for some good times and some spectacularly bad ones.  Thankfully we went to different schools growing up or the competition factor would have put us at each others throats more often than we already were.  Our scraps have become family story fodder from the time I ran him down with my big wheel, chopping up the back of his leg with the torn up hard plastic front wheel, to the epic 'we nearly drowned each other!' weekend at the lake.

One particular time has caught my memory tonight though.  I had moved away for my freshman year at college, taking my brand new N64 with me to the dorms.  Life was great.  I had a cool circle of friends, new gaming hardware, and was three hours away from the family for the first time in my life.

While I didn't really want to come home for Thanksgiving, the idea had formed of picking up my SNES for some classic gaming goodness with my buddies.  That idea alone got me home and through the first evening.

<EDIT> I talk here as if my family were bad, but that's not the case at all.  A great group of people, I was just in my own world at the time and wanted nothing to do with them.

The morning of my second day home started out with a cursory search through my old room and the basement.

"Matt!" I yelled, "Where's my Super Nintendo?"

"Gone man, I traded it in..." Was the reply.

"... And the games?" (there were 60+) I hesitantly asked, the vein on my forehead starting to throb.

"Gone man, traded them too." Was again the reply.

<Edited nasty brawl, much cussing and a broken crown on my part>

<We've since put the incident behind us>

The point of the story is to always keep everything you care about in viewing range.  Failing that, remember that in the past few years your brother has out-sized you and isn't going to take getting slammed into the ground as well as he did when he was ten.  Failing that, arrange for a 'will' of sorts to exist regarding shared childhood toys.  Otherwise you may come home to your brother playing games on his new Dreamcast while you pine for Super Mario World, Final Fantasy III, and Super Metroid.

If you've read my blogs before you know I usually end with a question.  What's your worst gaming tragedy?  Did games ever cause a riff between you and a sibling?

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY GIO!!!