“Yo, just wunnerin when the hell yer gonna mention me in your blog. Do people even know that you have a brother?”

Well, now they do! Way to blow the roof of that one, Steve. That quote was extracted from a voice mail message my BIG BROTHER STEVE left for me last night. Any by BIG BROTHER, I don’t mean some guy looking to score brownie points with the Lord or to beef up his college application by hanging out with poor, left-over souls like me. I mean BIG as in HA-YUGE and BROTHER as in SHARES MY DNA, which he and I both know is quite unfortunate, really. So, since his birthday is approaching, I will dedicate this blog entry to my bro. Baby Steve. I sure am sad your bank is closed.

Baby Steve and I have been through a lot together. Steve was an ugly-assed baby. And by ugly, I mean U-G-L-Y You Ain’t Got No Alibi. People would ooh and aah over him after his arrival and my mom felt the need to say, “It’s Ok. He’s not cute. You don’t have to lie to me.”

But once the shiners cleared up and his head assumed the shape of a sphere rather than a trapezoid, he was seriously pretty darn cute. He had big, brown eyes, freckles, a perfect nose (BASTARD), and lovely, dark brown ringlets. That’s right, I said ringlets. People used to think he was a girl he was so pretty. HAHHAAAA-HAHHA-HA! People used to think you were a girl, Steve! Ahahahhahhaaa! Ok.

He apparently took the news of my arrival in his typical almost-too-laid-back style. Little did he know I would torment him for the rest of his godforsaken life. There was the time I smashed a huge plastic replica of a red crayola crayon into his front teeth because I was trying to feed it to him like a baby. He bled. Heh. He got me back though, when he locked me in Mom-Mom Evie’s closet, which he KNEW I would flip out about. One too many viewings of Amityville Horror and The Changeling turned me in to a panicked maniac. He eventually let me out after my dad screamed at him.

He also blamed the huge green paint stain in the closet of the spare bedroom on ME, prompting a tsk-tsk look from my dad and a big ol’ slap from my mom. And how about the time he sat on my face right after he blew a breeze off a turd?

Of course, there were nice things he did for me. Such as letting me sleep in his bed with him after I spent an hour sitting on top of my bed screaming my throat raw because I just KNEW there was a werewolf in my closet and I would not lay there and just let it kill me! Of course, that scenario was similar to the one in which he put his Alien action figure in my closet when he knew that nasty thing TERRIFIED me.

There were times when we suffered in tandem, however. When our friends were outside playing in the summertime at 8:30 p.m., we forced to go to bed, all the while listening to their shrieks of laughter and watching hot air balloons drift past our window. Forced to bed when it was still light out. CRUEL! We also suffered through the Pancake Days together, and I don’t think there was a chore in that house that we didn’t do, especially when my pukey little brother arrived and my mom got sick shortly afterward. And oh yeah, my dad left sometime after the green paint stain and before the Alien action figure in the closet.

Farting on my face notwithstanding, Baby Steve (so named by Kelly to differentiate from my father, also named Steve, and referred to as Big Steve so as not to confuse anyone. However, Big Steve seemed to fit my brother Steve better, since he is eight feet tall. And you can’t say “old Steve” or “young Steve” when someone asks “Which Steve?” So you just say, “Baby Steve.” Which is actually quite funny because he is SO DARN LARGE) is a pretty damn good big brother. Even though I am smarter, and funnier, and way cuter, he is still nice to me and gives me money whenever I need it, which is all the time. But he’s like freakin’ Tony Soprano, man. You betta pay that sh*t back!

Thanks for letting me yell at you for 3,000 miles to California. Thanks for always shelling out money for me. Thanks for taking my call after every episode of Smallville and during American Idol. Thanks for letting me make fun of you all the time. Thanks for picking my butt up at the Greyhound station. Thanks for all the secret ciggies. Thanks for caring about my friends and not killing Will, even though he deserved it and you really, really wanted to. Thanks for being a good big bro! I love you!

Happy 30th Birthday, Baby Steve!