Fair Warning

I remember standing near the window seat in my first room at our old, old, old house on Buell St. (three houses ago, from when we stopped adding "olds" to indicate how many had come since), with Tyler. We moved out of that house when I was nine; I would guess I was about seven on this day, which would have made Tyler four.

I remember the solemnity with which I addressed him -- that seriousness that only children can pull off unselfconsciously.

"Tyler," I said to him, and made sure he was listening, "I want to bite your finger."

He considered this for a few seconds.

"Will it hurt?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I'm going to bite it very hard."

He paused again, longer this time.

"Okay," he said. He held up his hand as though offering a sacrifice to the gods, and I took it in mine, selected his smallest finger, put it in my mouth, and bit it. Hard.

(True story.)

I just wanted to feel what it was like to bite something, a person, as hard as I wanted. I thought for sure -- I guess the last time I had injured my brother, I had lied about it afterward or something -- that if I were honest, I couldn't get in trouble. Unfortunately, Tyler, though he believed what I said when I told him it would hurt, cried out and Mom came into the room, and I was punished for hurting him, despite my warning him in advance.

"But I told the truth," I protested. I remember thinking that this was all that should have mattered; of course, it wasn't.

The reality is that there's no such thing as fair warning.