The air had a cold bite, the clouds thick like cotton candy. It was mid-November and my Aunt Nicole was visiting from Arizona. I was about 10 and my brother, Zach, was about 15. We sat in our room playing Rockband on our Xbox 360. In the living room my parents and aunt  were watching a movie.

For some reason, Zach found joy in seeing me go mad with anger. Because of our age difference, my brother and I didn’t have very much in common and didn’t get along well. Whenever I would talk to him all he would do was make fun of me or insult me in a “brotherly” way. We weren’t necessarily close, but when we did get along we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very often.

We just finished playing a song when my brother said something like, “Why’re you so bad at this game?” Annoyed, I yelled, “Shut up!” That was my mistake. Seeing that his comment had an effect on me, he added more. After a few minutes of my brother and I trading insults, Zach became bored. So, naturally, he began to hit me. The obvious thing to do, according to me, was to hit him back. This only caused an all-out fight. Pillows and Legos filled the air as Zach and I repetitively threw them at each other. I wasn’t too angry, until my parents walked in.
“What is going on?” exclaimed my mom as she walked into our room. Zach quickly put his hands up as if he didn’t have anything to do with the noise or mess. My mom looked at me and frowned. I looked at Zach and he gave me a snotty grin, hidden from my mother’s view. I ran to my brother and tried to hit him, but my mom grabbed me before I could even touch him. Zach put on a hurt face, as if he were the victim in the situation.

My mom walked me to the living room to separate me from him and give me time to cool down. This normally would have had a positive effect, but in this scenario I could still see my brother. He sat in our room poking his head out of the door, taunting me. I tried to remain silent, but it became too difficult and I snapped. Jumping out of my seat, I charged at him. This time I did punch him a few times but they did little to nothing to him. When my mom ran over and grabbed me, Zach got a quick punch and gave me a “dead leg”. That was when I completely lost control of my emotions and actions. I kicked and flailed like a toddler. Finally, my mom took me to the laundry room, a small space with two doors on either end. One door was solid and led to my parents’ room, the other had a glass square to look through into the kitchen and living room. In the far right corner was a drier and a washing machine. Left of the machines was a coffee table and a small dog kennel. Across from the machines was a few shelves full of cleaner products.

My mom sat on the other side of the door, holding it closed until I calmed down. Behind my mom, of course, was Zach taunting me. But this time I didn’t get angrier. This time I became ashamed. Behind Zach was my aunt, who had never seen me this aggravated. For the first time I chose to think about what I was doing and take control of my anger. After a minute or two of collecting myself, I asked to be released from the laundry room. Ashamed, I apologized to my aunt and Zach for attempting to hurt him. Later that night we had a good laugh about what happened and made amends, like we always did.

This specific memory has always stuck with me out of all the other times I’ve been angry for some reason. It might be because I grew up a little bit after my fight with Zach. It might also be because it was the first time I really realized what I was doing when I was angry and thought about the consequences of my actions. Either way it was a valuable experience, though it didn’t seem like it at the time.