Last night, after the kids hit the hay, I went out walkin’ barefoot in the yard. I watched some fireflies. I noticed some pink clouds up there in the sky. I played with my cat. I sat on the swing and I swang. And then I remembered a funny story. (Blogger now transitions from intro into funny-story time.)

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 So me and my little brother were just little folks. Like, I don’t know–I think I was 12 or so and he was 10 or so. We were at my Mamaw and Papaw’s house way out in the sticks. We were just a-swangin on the swing talking about life and stuff. “Hey Maggie,” my little brother exclaimed, “Just so you know, if there was ever a bad guy around, I wouldn’t even be scared. I would just beat him up.” As usual, I felt the mean-sister duty to laugh him to scorn and then retorted, “Whatever, you’re a scaredy cat. You would run away.” And the conversation continued something like this:

“No, I wouldn’t! I’m not scared of anything.” 
“Um, yes you are. You’re scared of a lot of things.”
“Nuh-uh! Like what?”
“Oh, like bears and wolves and stuff.”
“No, I’m not! I’m not scared of wolves. Even if a wolf came here right now, I wouldn’t even run. I would just beat it up.”
“Whatever.”

And then to prove my point, I whispered in a hushed, concerned tone, “Hey David, did you hear that? I’m pretty sure it was a coyote.” Now, back behind the swing-set was a fair amount of woods all grown up and there were always loud cicadas doing their loud cicada thing every summer. David pretended not to be perturbed and just kept on a-swangin. “Uhhh-ooooh!” I said, a bit more dramatically this time, while slowly turning my head and staring wide-eyed toward the dark woods. (Insert loud-gulping noise.) “I see some reeeeeed eyes, way out there, just lookin’ at us.” And with that, I lept off the swing and high-tailed it for the house. As I was running, a strange occurrence happened. My little brother, who wasn’t afraid of a thing, not only outran me, but slammed the door in my face before I could even get inside.
When I attempted to reason with him that he was indeed a scaredy-cat or else why in tarnations would he beat me to the house, he confidently replied, “No. I wasn’t scared. I was just seeing what you were doing.”

And then he grew up and joined the Marines. I guess he wasn’t scared of bad guys (or coyotes and wolves) after all.