When my youngest brother was born (he has since been known as The Baby, even until today), my other brother and I had, after years of bickering reached a certain accord because we were in mutual agreement that a third child was not needed. We implored my parents to give The Baby back to wherever he had come from, not yet understanding that he couldn’t be returned to the store. Once we accepted that The Baby was a permanent fixture in the family, we endeavored to make his life miserable. Our first tactic was to saddle him with an absurd name. Given that our last name was Gay, we wisely suggested our parents name The Baby Benjamin. They almost took the suggestion until my father happened to be staring in his medicine cabinet and happened upon a tube of Ben Gay. “You guys,” he shouted, and we had to concede defeat. When The Baby was about five months old, we thought we could just stick him in the basement and leave him there. We swaddled The Baby in blankets, placed him in a laundry basket, and slid him down the wooden stairs into the unfinished basement. There is indeed a God for very small children. He laughed all the way down and lay in his new bed quietly until my mother, worried about all the quiet in the house, came looking for us. She found her two older children staring down at her youngest from the top of the stairs. She was not amused. When The Baby was 18 months old, we finally realized that he adored us and would do whatever we asked and that was a small comfort. One day, we took him in the kitchen, stood in front of a set of cabinets and told him to run toward us, head first, as fast as possible. The Baby curled his little fingers into tiny fists, hunched his shoulders and came barreling at us with his little head leading the way, so blind was his devotion. We moved out of the way. I still remember the sound of The Baby’s hard head against the cabinets.
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