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Pique n' your interest

Sibling rivalries stand the test of time

Blood is thicker than water, as the saying goes, and sometimes it can be just as refreshing. I mean that in the familial sense.

I recently played host to my older brother and his girlfriend for five days, showing them around the mountains and this strange town I’m calling home on what will most likely be a permanent basis.

They left on Sunday, heading back to Toronto with mild sunburns, beer and bar food belly-aches, some incredible pictures, and a promise to return again next year for more of the same.

It was nice to have family around for a few days because it forced me to play tour guide, an experience that always leaves me with a deeper appreciation for the beauty and the spirit of this town.

Sometimes you tend to get caught up in the downside of everyday resort town life – the prices, the crowds, the wages, the wealth – and miss out on the big picture. When I take a step back and really look at it, my life is pretty sweet.

Having family around also helps to fill the void, at least temporarily, that grows every year I spend away from friends and family. Like a lot of the ski bums here I left everyone behind when I chose this life, and I miss them.

I also hope that my brother will go back to Toronto with a better understanding of why I chose to live halfway across the country, eking out a semi-pathetic existence in a town place that spells everything with dollar signs.

That understanding is important when you consider the fact that I come from a very small family and often feel guilty that I haven’t been around all that much for the past five years.

Without parents and family members around to critique every life choice I make, I sometimes wonder if I make the right choices. As I slowly nurse a battered chequing account back to health and contemplate the cost of a mortgage, car, new computer and sinus surgery, I needed some positive reinforcement, to know that I’m doing the right thing by being here.

Three days of spring skiing with my brother and the start of a respectable sunglass tan went a long way towards accomplishing that.

I also have to admit that I liked showing off a little for my big brother. He’s just learning to snowboard, and it’s not often that I get to show him up at anything.

I’d like to say we got along our whole lives, but that’s just a recent development in a long and sometimes violent sibling rivalry.

We’ve had more than our share of differences growing up, right down to the actual sequence of events that led to the breaking of my femur during a Star Wars era glow-in-the-dark light sabre fight. I was in Kindergarten when it happened, but that incident still comes up at the dinner table from time to time.

Always a little bigger and stronger than me, my brother used to wrestle me until I was exhausted. When I got to the point where I could no longer lift my arms, he would kneel on my chest grab one of my hands and start slapping me in the face with it. There isn’t a name for this kind of torture, but I think every younger brother knows the old "Why are you hitting yourself? Huh? Why are you hitting yourself?" routine.

Sometimes he would bounce a spoon off my forehead until I was ready to start biting, and once he rolled me up in a carpet and left me alone in a dark basement. His memory isn’t too good when it comes to these incidents, but I can assure you mine are.

The teasing was relentless. My voice actually went higher after puberty, and when I was young everyone used to make fun of my low, croaking speech. One of my nicknames was Froggy. I was also a little on the chubby side and my brother had a few nicknames for me regarding that as well.

So we fought. And fought and fought and fought. My dad learned to drive with one hand while he used his free hand to knock us apart.

The only thing that saved me in those days was the fact that you could get my nose to bleed just by flicking it, and our fights usually ended when the blood started.

Still, for all the conflict I continued to look up to my big brother. He liked bands and I liked the same bands. I worked at the same gas station he worked. He dressed like a skate punk, so I dressed like a skate punk.

But although we shared the same interests, we never really shared the same abilities.

Growing up he was the good skateboarder, with killer ollies and acid drops and grinds on parking blocks. I was the skater who knocked himself out twice in a two week span and decided to quit before I killed myself.

I recently gave my old Rodney Mullen Pink Panther board away to Goodwill, only to find out from my brother, now a board collector, that it was probably worth about $3,500. Once again I have to give the edge to my brother, who was always better at making money.

I love my job, but I do find it ironic that I live in Whistler and work indoors while he lives in Toronto and works outside. I report for a local news magazine while he uses his environmental engineering degree to restore wetlands, remediate soil, and block erosion.

It was nice to be better than him at snowboarding, even if I probably have more than 250 days on him over the last five years. For the amount I go, I actually suck.

I find myself looking forward to his next visit, but at the same time I know I’ll have to start working harder on my riding – something tells me he’s going to be a lot better on his snowboard the next time I see him.

Sibling rivalries never die, they only get older.