I'm 38 years old. When I was in the first grade on a school trip to the skating rink I tripped and landed on my chin. The blow travelled up into one of my top front teeth which required three root canals that year.
Needless to say, I never really learned how to skate after that. My sports loves probably go Patriots>Red Sox>Bruins>Celtics, with the Bruins and Sox being very close for second place.
In July 2009, I bought my first house and asked my then-girlfriend to move in with me. Four months later, in October 2009, my older, wilder brother ran into some legal trouble. I won't go into it much detail, other than to say that the charges stemmed involve a dishonest and vindictive ex-girlfriend. Long story short, he needed a place to stay and I had just bought a house, so he moved in with me and my girlfriend. My brother is a great guy - his heart is as big as anyone's I've ever me - but he's loud and he's stubborn and he doesn't make concessions easily.
Let me tell you, life was difficult - not only because I had my older crazy brother living with me when I was trying to build a life and family of my own, but also because of the way our judicial system works. If you haven't lived through it, I can't even begin to describe it to you. It's like if you could take every bad experience that you ever had with the RMV or some other representative of the government that didn't care about you and then switched it from them not caring about you to them actively disliking you and openly working against you, giving you false information and directions just so they can trick you into breaking parole or something. Have you ever had a police officer lie to you and tell you to do something just so they could arrest you when you did it? I have. Luckily I called the lawyer as I was driving over to do exactly what the cop said to do and the lawyer talked some sense into me.
Also, when you are dealing with the court system, everything moves at the slowest speed possible. My brother got arrested in 2009 and still hasn't received his court date as of today. We're going on over a year and a half later and there's not even a hint of when the court date will be. You just sit and wait and wait and wait.
As these things tend to do, the tension from the legal situation at times boiled over into the way my brother and I dealt with each other. At times I was resentful with him living with us(unemployed) while my girlfriend and I had to get up and go to work. At times I wanted him gone already.
In other ways, however, my brother and I grew closer. One of those ways was by watching the Bruins together. Prior to living with my brother, I would maybe have gone to one game a year, usually if someone offered free tickets or something. Since my brother moved in with me, though, I probably went to about five games a year, usually as my gift to him for his birthday or christmas or something (he was unemployed at the time). Mostly, though, we watched many many hockey games together on NESN. He's a big bruins fan and it rubbed off on me.
I married my girlfriend in May 2010. I think I always knew I would marry her, but it was by seeing her being okay with that fact that I asked my brother to move in with us that I realized she was the one. When we got married, my brother performed the ceremony. He was still living with us at the time. My brother moved out in January of this year. I had to ask him to move out. It had been over a year and it was time. My wife is now pregnant with twins. My brother is doing well. He seems happy and on the right track.
Unless, of course, the Bruins game is on and they are playing a flopping weak team like the Canucks or blowing the lead against the Flyers or what have you. Then he's a maniac, screaming at the tv and scaring the cats out of the room.
Tonight I hope for a calm gentle night of slaughter where we go up by five goals in the first period and never let off the gas.