A very happy, tall and skinny birthday

My most favorite person in the whole entire world recently returned from the army, having served his mandatory military “duty” to his county, which really is a regrettable and unrecoverable waste of perhaps the best two years of any young man’s life just out of college.

This favorite person, who is one of the cutest geeks and a rabid fan of soccer (think Juventus), speaks Italian and dreams of living in Italy one day, calls me “ma piccolo bambina ” – my little one, despite being the youngest of the two of us – this favorite person happens to be my brother, who just turned twenty two. The idea that my baby brother is already twenty two is a little scary – having the older sister syndrome, I will always see him as the baby of the family. Although the baby has all the smarts of the genius who will invent the next brilliant invention of mankind, that is, if he decides to finally give up slacking and get off his butt to put his brains to work.

Although as kids we were very close, we sort of drifted apart after I hit a certain age – blame the age gap and the fact that I was often absent for long periods of time and busy with one thing or another. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t spend enough time with him when I could and missed out on being there to watch him become who he is today – one of the greatest, smartest, funniest, kindest and tallest people that I know. But despite all the time that we’ve been apart, despite the fact that being from the same family, we are, after all, product of two drastically different environments, we have the strongest bond and an unspoken understanding with each other that only grows stronger as we grow older. We read each others' thoughts, finish each others' sentences, understand each others' gestures, laugh at each others' jokes before they're even told and team up against our mom, making fun of her in a most endearing way that always makes her laugh.

Happy birthday, my little tall and skinny genius. I miss you more than anything else. And since we’re already too old to wish each other jars of mayonnaise and jelly on our birthdays, I wish you a bottle of bourbon, since last time i checked, you were still the smartass who had not stopped drinking bourbon early in the mornings.