Sibling rivalries are almost always part of growing up. Dinner time, though, is a time for filling mouths with luscious nutrition and asking how each other's days went. Not for my family, though. No, our dinners were the epitome of a war-zone between my older brother, Daniel, and me. With three years of separation, he and I were just the right age to never go to school together unless we were too young to know how to go to the bathroom properly, or we were in high school and were too obsessed with our own angst-y lives to care about the other sibling. The one time of the day, however, was when the hands of the clock aligned like the stars in the night sky, spelling out the casualties of the evening.
Let me get one thing straight. Daniel loves the show “Dragon Ball Z.” He loved it then, he loves it now, he owned a costume and almost all of the videotapes. I loathed “Dragon Ball Z” with every bit of girlish anger I could muster. I was a Sailor Scout from the moon and I could beat down any overly-muscled anime character he could name. “Sailor Moon” all the way, baby.
One evening, Daniel was sitting at the head of the table, as always, and asked me to hand him the mashed potatoes. I obliged and turned to give him the bowl when he sat his hands on the table, so cleverly, precisely, and menacingly. This boy was pure evil. His two wrists were held together, fingers splayed out like a large bowl, ready to blast energy at me from his disgustingly male skin. The first shot had been fired and it was war.
The one thing I knew about boys back then was that they were dumb. So dumb that Daniel had fired his bullet at me while I had a moist, gooey substance in a hard bowl conveniently placed in my hands. Poor, foolish Daniel. I looked at him with eyes of fire and my knuckles turned white on the bowl, muscles clenching and ready for the movement. Before Daniel registered my thought process, the mashed potatoes were being launched at his face in handfuls as fast as I could muster.
Carpet, tablecloth, clothes, roast beef, and people; nothing was safe from the wrath which he had spawned. “Sailor Moon Action! Sailor Moon Potato Attack!” I screamed and ranted and kicked him after the bowl had emptied and waved my spoon like a madman. How dare he mess with a Sailor Scout!
The fight stopped soon after it started, but it was enough to get the point across. “Dragon Ball Z” was nothing compared to “Sailor Moon.” My grandparents' eyes never failed to surprise them in beholding such hatred between two children and their hands had to pause before reacting in pulling us apart.
Dinner was never safe. Dinner time was the high noon of our household and far too often was the food used as the ammo. My weapon of choice was always the spoon, for it was the closest thing that looked like the wand Sailor Moon had in the show. I claim to this day that everything was Daniel's fault. I never started a thing. But that was so long ago and I admit now that I should have never wasted such good food by throwing at my silly brother. However, I still look at spoons with a special affinity today. It's a pity that, after all this time, he still thinks he can beat me at dinner.
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