My younger brother and I have had our fair share of fights growing up. Most of them being more physical than any passive aggressive petty fights. Usually ours involve some pushing and shoving, and occasionally punches thrown but we’ve always known when to stop. There hasn’t been many times where we got out of control, we usually got in trouble or one of us would tap out before it escalated. Except for that one time he actually tried to kill me.

We are three years apart I must have been like eleven so he must have been eight, and we were just swimming in our pool messing around like kids do. We wanted to see who could hold their breath the longest under water. We were guys, so we always need to do something competitive but both of us were terrible swimmer at this point in our life so it was anyones game. If we didn’t push off the bottom of the pool to come up for air in the deep end, we would struggle holding our breath coming back up for air. He went first, I stayed above water counting the seconds in my head. He went right to the bottom of the pool, set up on the floor like he was ready to launch himself out of the water like a rocket ship as soon as he ran out of air. He had to be down there twenty seconds or so before he shot up above water. It was the record to beat.

Then it was my turn. I pushed off the end of the pool and set my feet on the bottom of the pool just as my brother did. I wasn’t counting in how long I was under water, I was solely focused on holding my breath long as I could to beat him. When I was ready to come up for air, I put my head down and sprang up to the surface but came to an abrupt halt at the top of the water. I had to open my eyes under water and I saw my brother floating above me looking down at me. I swam straight up into his stomach and I could hear him laughing. I went to swim away from him and come up for air, but again he followed and was on top of me and I crashed into him again. I was scared now, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold my breath. For my third attempt I swam to the bottom of the deep end and set my feet once again to launch myself out of the water. This time however I had my head up and jumped to where he wasn’t and could took a huge gasp of air when I sprung out of the water.

I swam right over to him and then proceeded to attempt to drown him to show him what it felt like. I didn’t actually do it, our mom was yelling at me like I was the bad guy. I guess she didn’t even see him almost killed me. He was the baby child and he for sure got babied. I got him back with his calfs but we’re far from even. He tried to kill me.