Some old family friends are in Melbourne and just dropped by for a few minutes. They're gone now. Their mum is my mum's best friend, the first person who got to know mum when we first moved to Melbourne when I was five years old. They moved to Queensland about ten years ago and I hadn't seem them since, until now. I went to school with the boys, two brothers. We used to spend time at each other's houses.
The older brother (J) is about the same age as my older brother, so he would hang out with my older brother and sister more than me when we went over to their place (or they went over to mine.) He was a year level above me. What I remember about him was this one time when we were at school. When I was in school in prep I used to not speak. I would speak at home and at church, but not at school. There was this time when J was arguing with this other boy from school on whether I could talk. This other boy reckoned I was unable to talk at all, J, who often saw me outside of school, knew I could, and was trying to convince his friend that I could talk. So he goes up to me and said, "Come on Naomi, say something. It's me, J, you can talk to me.'
I still didn't say anything, though.
The other thing I remember about him was when they were sleeping over at our house. We had run out of pillows or something, so I said he could have mine, but then later when I couldn't sleep because I wasn't used to sleeping without a pillow, I regretted my decision, and went to where he was sleeping to get it back. He refused to return it, though, and spat on both sides of it so I wouldn't want it. I didn't care and took it back, anyway.
The younger brother I have more memories of since he's the one I would hang out with when we were at other people's houses. He was younger than me by a couple of years and so I knew him before he started school. Although he was younger, he was the dominant one. I would always have to either be the villain or the sidekick when we played Batman. We also sometimes made our toys have sex with each other by bumping their groins together. The year he was about to start school, I asked his mother that wasn't she worried about how he'd act at school? I don't remember why I said it but his mother didn't understand why I was concerned and reacted by laughing at the idea. I was embarrassed by what I said. Once, years later, I overheard her talking about it to my parents and then she laughed at it, and it made me feel ashamed. I often wonder if she was offended by what I said but since I was just a little kid, decided to laugh it off instead. He once smashed an unripe lemon in my face and it really, really hurt. He was later diagnosed with aspergers and was homeschooled during much of highschool, although this was after they had moved to Queensland.
