Why I wanted to be like my brother, I will never understand

So this post is not so much a story but a list of ridiculous things that my brother convinced me to believe when I was little. I’m sure I will continue to think of things to put on this list for years to come. I want to believe that I’m not quite as gullible any more, but that is questionable. I’m not going to tell you what age I was during these events. I will let you imagine me at the age you believe appropriate!

First off, I’m going to introduce my brother with the most flattering picture that I have of him:

Note: I did not ask permission to post this photo so i hope it does not result in an atomic wedgie the next time I see him

Secondly, I'm going to prove to you that I would do anything to be just like my brother with another photo:

Alright...now that we have that over with, on to things that the brother convinced me were true:


My middle name was Scruff

That’s right, Jody Scruff Porter. Do you know how embarrassing it is to introduce yourself to new friends as Jody Scruff Porter? As an aside to this point, he was justified in naming me Scruff as I basically looked dishevelled every day of my childhood, at no fault to my parents. I’m slightly more put together now, but it takes work, people!

In general I did not seem to understand the concept of a middle name. After the scruff incident I then went on to believe that everyone’s middle name was either Leigh or Lee. My middle name is Leigh, my brother’s is Lee, my neighbour’s was Leigh and the list went on so I just assumed it was a standard name!

Cows were horses and horses were cows

Now you might not think this was a terrible thing for him to teach me and that it was just a normal brotherly sisterly relationship. If you think that then you underestimate just how much weight I used to put in what my brother taught me. He was my older brother so he HAD to be right. He would never trick me!

I think my parents thought that this was kind of cute as we would be driving down the highway and when passing various farms, I would shout out cow, horse, cow, cow and each time it would be the opposite of what I said. They might have even thought I was joking until the day that we went to visit my cousin in NB. She had recently got a new horse which I was really excited to meet. As we pulled up to their home there was a cow standing at the end of the road. With joy and excitement in my voice I said “Is that Belle’s horse?” I was being serious. I had no clue that it was a cow. That was the day that I learned just how sneaky a brother could be!

Sneaking into the neighbour’s yard was not dangerous

Ok, so why were we sneaking into our neighbour’s yard? Well, we were constantly losing our toys over the monstrous hedge that separated our land from theirs. These neighbours were not the friendliest of people and didn’t understand the importance of us coming on to their property to retrieve our belongings. So we had to be sneaky. On most days this went undetected except for 1 day which I will never forget.

We were playing with a ball and I’m sure we were having a ton of fun until the ball went over the hedge. My brother wasn’t the bravest of little boys (sorry, but it’s true!) so he sent me on the ball retrieval trip. I was so happy to be playing with my brother that I would have done anything to keep the fun going so I took on the challenge willingly. To be honest, I don’t even think that I thought that much about it. He asked so I did it. Now a key part of this story, is that on this particular day I was wearing a dress. This was unusual because I was not a girly girl. Unfortunately on this day, the ball had landed in a particularly horrible spot. In a ground nesting bee’s nest!! That’s right; there are some bee’s that make their home underground. I didn’t see this nest and stomped up to the ball and straight into it. The bee’s went bezerk since I had just smooched their home.

Have you ever had a bee fly up your dress? Have you ever had multiple bees flying around under your dress? I don’t recommend trying it out.

I had bee’s everywhere and unfortunately bee’s leave their stingers so everywhere that they stung me, the stinger then had to be removed. I ran home most likely screaming and in panic! When my parents realized what had happened they brought me into the house and began extracting all the stingers.

Now I don’t remember exactly how many stingers had to be pulled out (I’m my mind it was hundreds but it was probably closer to 50, or maybe that’s an exaggeration s well) but I do remember that they were in my hair and in my dress and that it was very painful. I guess the bright side of this story is that I wasn’t allergic?!


I know I said that this was less like a story and more like a list but I lied. In order to show the why these things were so funny, I must elaborate a little. There are many more things that my brother convinced me to do during our childhood and even into adulthood. He continues to convince me to do things that I would otherwise be too cautions to attempt!