**It was my brother who had the knife!**

This was my daughter's response to a comment I made in our conversation this evening. She mentioned at one point how cool her brother is. That characterization came about as part of a larger conversation on how her father has done nothing to help either of them attain their educational goals. But when all is said and done they will be just fine and then, I hope they remember the people who were there for them:

Aunts, uncles and a grandmother and cousin who do things like:

• pick them up at the airport
• house and feed them over breaks
• offer cars for transportation
• help them find meaningful summer work when it looks like flipping burgers may be the only option
• visit them in foreign countries for holidays so they are not alone
• open their home as a base for summer employment

I love my family.

But to get back to the statement that heads up this entry, I reminded my daughter that she can be there for her brother over the next few years helping him in some of these ways as he winds up college. It was at this point that she then commented that her brother was cool.

I took this opportunity to remind her that they didn't always get along so well. I would sometime get calls after school with "he did this or she did that." My response was, if there was no arterial bleeding then don't bother me at work. So I told my daughter in this evening's conversation that I remember getting a frantic call at the office one late afternoon with the words, "E. has a knife and she is going to kill me." My daughter emphatically and quickly corrected the record, "It was my brother who had the knife!"

My thought:

Did it really matter?