Historically my favorite color has always been blue, and my brothers has been red.  For as long as I can remember, blue, most likely stemming back to the hospital room I was born in, with the blue id bracelet, the blue blankets, and the blue balloons. I don’t know if the Mexican hospital my brother was born in fucked up a balloon delivery and brought him a red one instead of a blue one, or if the fact that he couldn’t keep food down for the first few days of his life forced them to open up his stomach and all he saw was blood and red, but for whatever reason, he dug red.

Since our parents tried their best to not foster unhealthy competition and rivalry between my brother and I, and since we were only two years apart, they used to get us very similar presents for birthday and Christmas.  The main point of differentiation was the color, he would get red, and I would get blue.  So everything I owned was blue, and everything he owned was red.  There would be no debates about whose toy it was, or who left their pillow on the plane, because the colors didn’t lie (and because I was always right anyhow).

Then one day, my brother could afford to buy things for himself.  With his hard earned green he would buy new kicks, or basketball jersey’s.  They were blue. Blue Tar Heels apparel, or blue Air Jordan’s.  No longer shackled by the ancient decision of ‘favorite color’, he had re-evaluated the choices before him and conceded to the gods of Blue.  But it was my color.  How could he do this to me?

Now we were old enough not to get into squabbles about who things belonged to, or whose was broken, but my parents were another story.  Old habits die hard, and to this day, they still buy us similar gifts from time to time, and sure enough the colors say it all.  The blue one is for me, and the red one is for him.  But I am left unable to enjoy my blue ‘thing’ because I know that deep-down, it is the color that my brother would prefer. So he gets a red one, which he is unhappy with because of it’s inferior color, and I get a blue one, which I am unhappy with knowing my brothers sorrow.

To partially remedy this guilt, I have stolen his red sheets.  I’m not sure if mom or dad bought them for him, but I stole them on my way to Hawaii, and they are freshly laid out (by my mother) on the bed for my visitor arriving Sunday.  They remind me of my brother, because they were his, because they are red, and because since I have them he will hopefully have replaced them with a blue set.

Tags: Blue, Colors, Da Ba Dee, Eiffel 65, Mexico, Red, Seb

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.