How to Deal with Your Smarter Brother

What's that you say? You're an incredibly intelligent, multi-faceted, renaissance man with the ability to turn lead into gold by simply touching it? Good for you. The following question, however, might knock you off of your oh-so-lofty perch and send you sailing down into a mucky mess of horrible low self-esteem. The question is this: do you have a younger brother?

Let me tell you this much about younger brothers: they are a wily, guileful, and clever lot. Oh, they may seem innocent enough when you hold them for the first time, with all of the saliva bubbles and drool. If you have a younger brother, are holding him now, and are too young to understand the full ramifications of your peril, you need simply do the following: devote every moment, henceforth, to dumbing him down. I'm not talking about dropping him on the floor, or tapping his forehead with a ball-peen hammer. This will result in two things, and two things only-angry parents, and an angry brother. And, believe you me, you do not want to make your younger brother angry. Take it from a guy who's had nearly twenty-six years of experience dealing with this issue.

So, dropping you baby brother and the ball-peen hammer are just not options. "Just how the heck will my ego survive when he grows up, then?" you may ask. Take it from an older, dumber brother who's made it this far without attempting to drill a three quarter inch hole in his head-start the battle early, and never relent.

This is not to say that you will win the battle. In fact, the truth is quite the contrary. Your younger brother will surpass you in every measurable category someday. You will lose this battle. This is important to remember when attempting to dumb him down. The best you can hope for is to bring him within thirty IQ points of yourself-and I'm not talking deficit on his behalf.

Patience, persistence, and a decidedly surreptitious mean-streak will, however, pay some dividends eventually. Instead of being comparatively less intelligent in terms of say, Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom as compared to a trilobite, you may actually be able to climb the evolutionary ladder and land in Jane Goodall territory as a chimpanzee. For the record, Thoth was an ape as well. So, sorry to say, all you can achieve through your efforts is to be the kind of ape that scratches himself and flings waste material, rather than the kind that winds up immortalized in hieroglyphics.

The lesson here is this: don't make my mistakes and do things to anger your brother when he is still a little less talented than you are. He will remember each and every one of the terrible things that you have done to him during his childhood, and make you suffer by showing you up in any endeavor you undertake. He won't even break a sweat doing so. You, however, will find yourself forced to worship Thoth, all the while wondering why you can't stop throwing poop at him. But, hey, it is what it is-right?