Brothers

I am the youngest.  I have two brothers.  My middle brother Gary has had some challenges in his life, birth related hypoxia left him playing developmental catch up, and unfortunately he was labeled and neglected by the school system.  He didn't talk about it for decades, he still seldom does.  A few years ago, in a moment of stress and frustration he described to me that each year of school, through high school started out with the basics, as he described it "Kindergarten stuff, " wasting his time for the first few weeks of each school year, limiting his access to new learning. They assumed that "special education" meant that he was unable to learn, and seldom bothered to assess where he was at, so they could move on from a baseline.  

I am so proud of him, of what he has made of his life.  He has worked for Disney for 41 years.  He owns his home, and just bought himself a very nice new car.  He takes care of himself and helps others.  He is caring and generous, to an extent that he is sometimes taken advantage of.  Being taken advantage of is not his fault, it is the creeps that exploit him (my ex is one of them.) He has been abused and taken advantage of much of his life - things from childhood he will not talk about - I am only peripherally aware of. He is very self aware of his strengths and his weaknesses.  He pushes back strongly against people who try to tell him what he ought to do, he likes to be asked, not told.  He was treated like a child for so much of his life, that when I figured out that he was not a child, he grew very resistant to being told what to do.  He lives alone, has most all of his adult life.  He enjoys his independence and having things organized in his own chatatic way. 

Do you have a sibling with an interesting story?