No Sandwiches Were Injured...

    Last year I beat my brother at ping pong. It was a big deal to me. My brother has always been better than me at all things athletic. He's never been fat. He's never been an emotional eater. He got paid to model jeans in a print ad right after he graduated from college. He has always had everything. When he had a kid. she was ridiculously attractive. He has a house. He has his own business. He owns two cars. He's probably never been tested for an STD.
    When I was a kid everyone used to comment on how handsome my brother was. As an aside, they pinned me into the smart category. Only problem was I wasn't a very good student, and it's entirely possible I wasn't all that smart.
    I skipped the third grade, which was probably one of the reasons they thought I was smart. That year, I was in the same grade as my brother. We were both fourth graders. He was two years older than me. That year I killed the class gerbil. It's not like I murdered the class gerbil. Just so you know.
    I crushed the class gerbil with my fat knee. I was sitting on top of the desk at the alternative school, where they let kids sit on top of desks and get fake married and a guy named Ziggy painted flowers on the high school girls' backs. I was sitting on the desk, and I was reading along with the kid who was reading out loud. I had just gotten shushed by the teacher because I was actually reading out loud too.
    Anyway, the class gerbil was loose and running from desk to desk. If I had to guess, he or she was likely trying to escape to the basement of the building. He darted under me right as I was shifting from leaning on my right leg to leaning on my left leg. I remember seeing a tiny squirt of red spread across the desk. It looked kind of like the sauce they smear across the plates at the last minute on cooking shows.
    I don't really remember too much else about the incident. I suppose the little guy squirmed under my weight for a moment. I remember the teacher telling us he was going to be put to sleep, a term that both confused me and may have contributed to a lifetime of insomnia that spans nearly 40 years.
I can't remember why I went off on that tangent, perhaps to illustrate my lack of physical coordination. I was no slouch in the slouch department.
    My brother and I attended the same school until my eighth grade year. He was always popular, and I was mostly not. Occasionally, a popular girl would briefly befriend me in an effort to get closer to my brother. That move tricked me every single time. Whenever it happened, I'd be like, it must be because I parted my hair on the other side, or because my beauty had finally become accessible to them.
    My brother had sex in high school. My brother had girlfriends. My brother was never alone. My brother didn't mind being alone. My brother wasn't afraid of ghosts, he didn't pull his mattress off his bed and drag it into our mother's bedroom after reading "1984", and he didn't have an eating disorder. He was fine.
    So that's the back story. My brother has always been the thoroughbred and I've always been the mule.
    It's Christmas eve and we are playing ping pong out in my grandparents garage. I'm holding my own with my brother, something I'm trying not to acknowledge. I'm in the zone, I'm hitting zingers off the forehand side when normally the zingers come from the backhand side. I'm flowing across the garage floor, I'm returning every serve, and at some point I hit a volley. That bears repeating, I hit a fucking volley!
    Then it occurs to me, I might actually beat my brother, and my mind starts searching for reasons why. Has he lost his edge, or am I genuinely kicking his ass? I start thinking about what the world will be like if I beat my brother. I run it over and over again in my head, "What if you really are a winner?" It starts to fuck with me, and I start to lose my lead.
    I'm falling back, and my brother starts to taunt me. He's talking shit, and then something primal in me kicks in. Today is the day I put this bullshit to rest. I rally. I'm taking this bitch down. And I do. I beat him. It feels like these caged birds are flying out of my chest. Free! They're free at last. And they're soaring into beautiful blue skies like fucking champions.
    About a week later, we're back out at my grandparents house playing ping pong in the garage again. The old loser mindset is gone. I've taken down a winner, and I no longer need to be defined by my losses. I'm confident. So confident I start talking smack.
    My brother takes it for a while, but he gets annoyed right about the time I told him there was a new sheriff in town. He stops the ball mid-air and switches his ping pong paddle from his left-hand to his right hand. "I was playing left-handed when you beat me last week," he informs me smugly.
    I'm devastated. I actually feel my blood sugar rise and I'm shaking a little bit. I can feel the birds returning, beating their wings against my chest, screaming something like, "You better open this door, Jenny, before I do something we both regret!"
    Needless to say, my brother kicked my ass. He killed me. It was over in less than five minutes. It was like... oh, fuck it, it was like any other day.
    By the way, I repeated the fourth grade the next year because I was, and I quote, "socially inept." Fuck yeah, I was.