10 THANKFUL FOR MY LIL' BRO

Today, NOVEMBER 15, 2011 - #10  in the Thanksgiving Birthday Countdown -  is my little brother's birthday.  Zermon Drummond is 35 years old today.  He is very special to me and I love him very much.  That's why I've decided to ALLOW him to have ONE day in MY special birthday month countdown.  He's such a pesky little brother, too.  Although he has this straight and narrow, mechanical engineer demeanor; he is very playful and a practical joker.   In other words, he is to me what King is to Austin.

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For example, when we were younger, he would use a whole roll of duct tape to wrap a Christmas gift and then sit and watch you struggle to open it.  It was awful.  You would almost give up on finding out what was inside.  He would be cracking up the whole time.  And to think, my mom says I used to volunteer to take his spankings.  I must have permanent amnesia where that's concerned because I don't remember it at all.  

My mom says I was the peacekeeper in the family.  I guess if you think about it, I was in the middle of an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister.  If the older two weren't blaming me for something; I was busy taking the blame for the younger two.  

If you are a child of the 1970's, you know all about a good whooping. Today, it's called a "spanking".  My mom's motto was if one person gets, everybody gets.  That's because we would never rat each other out.  But once my older brother and sister got too old for whoopings, I still had to cover  the other end of the spectrum. While it seems pretty outlandish and I don't remember doing it; I can believe that I took Zermon's punishments. 

I've always been protective of my little brother.  We are four years apart, but we have so much in common.  We fought the same fight all through school.  Being a dark-skinned child in Mississippi was not fun.  We went through it!  So I was always protective of him because I knew his pain.  We've both overcome that time in our lives, and it has made us both stronger and better people.

Today on his special ONE day, I'm most thankful for his life, the love he has for his family and the man he has become.  I love you, Lil' Bro!

See what I mean!!!

I always wished I could just sneak one in on him, but as you can see from his size, I never had a shot.

Just having fun on the beach in St. Augustine, FL (5/2011)

 

Here with wife, Harriett, whom I also love very much!