Little brothers are very curious ....... when they are adolescents, they are EXTREMELY annoying. I could list a few examples, but any one who HAS any younger brothers is more than familiar with the activities to which I refer.
However, when they get past that phase, they can be very helpful, to say the least.
I attempted to bake a rum cake to bring to a relative's house for Christmas. I had the recipe, I followed it ALMOST to the letter, but I made a questionable Bundt pan choice too late in the process to recover from my blunder after all the stores were closed on Christmas Eve. For those that don't know it, I am an EXPERT procrastinator, so I didn't make the cake until Christmas morning.
There were a series of unfortunate events I could go into in detail, but suffice it to say, the mini Bundt pan choice was a big mistake, and one should always have lots of Crisco on hand if one is going to do some serious baking.
So I was relaying the gory details to my little brother the day after Christmas (I had to find out how the book intensive gift choices went over with his 7 year old), and a statement of incredible wisdom and insight came out of his mouth.......
"So you were making a rum cake, were you drinking any rum at the time?" he asked. I wasn't, since it was Christmas morning, and I was still trying to be more nice than naughty......
"That was your first mistake!" he replied. Or "No WONDER the cakes didn't come out the way you expected!" or something to that effect. I don't have a photographic memory, so the story will necessarily change from telling to telling......
I am not sure if he is so smart now because he is a parent, or if he benefited from all the big sisterly advice I provided through the years, but he certainly turned out to be an excellent guy. I would like to think that I had even a small part of his becoming such a smart, caring and funny adult.
