"I was born first so I'll always be older."
Like most children with siblings I can't remember a time when my older brother and I weren't alternating between being at each other's throats and being best of companions. My mom has a picture of me and my brother from some christmas; he was about 6, I was 4. Both of us are dressed in matching Christmas sweatshirts a snowman embroidered on the front. We stand, smiling, arms around each others shoulders in the way that cartoons imitate life imitating cartoons. The arms around each other's shoulders weren't a show of brotherly love though, we were actually trying to pull each other into a headlock.
My brother was and is also subject to unexpected bouts of rage. He's one of those people who seems normal on the outside until they snap at one point. There's no buildup of aggression, there's just a threshold at which he switches from being tolerant to being crazed. My brother and I were obsessed with LEGOs when we were kids and still are somewhat. We would always have fights over who got control of the 'cool pieces': anything clear or shiny or different from the standard blocks and plates. He was never as respectful of property as I and he would frequently take apart my creations for specific parts, leaving them in pieces on the floor. After he did this one time, I snuck back down into the basement where the LEGOs were and I completely took apart all of his creations and hid the cool pieces. When he came down I ran upstairs, hearing his own footsteps right behind me. The doctors told my parents that my head had been hit against the floor hard enough to cause minor bruising to my brain.
"Well, if I killed you, you'd be dead and then I would be the oldest one alive."
As we got older, my brother and I drifted apart a lot. He was fascinated about science and would talk your ear off about particle accelerators and chemistry and oceanography given the chance. He became more eccentric, reveling in his weirdness. He also started to develop an arrogant streak and a major superiority complex.
While my brother was making the focus of his life more outward, I was making mine more inward. This was the same time I brushed with clinical depression. Puberty worked against me and his 2 ¾ years on me meant that we were no longer comparable in strength. To maintain a balance of power, I usually went for the knives in the kitchen whenever we fought. He liked holding power over my head and sadistically enjoyed yanking me around both physically and metaphorically. When I complained his favorite phrase was "Suck it up princess". Whenever I hear that phrase now I want to physically attack the speaker, regardless of who it is. Even more, I want to attack my brother for how he treated me.
"Yeah, but then I'd be dead longer."
We're closer now than we've ever been, mainly because we're further apart. He went off to college two years ago and not living with each other has done wonders to our relationship. We can pretend we have enough in common to have a civil conversation for a few hours and we still manage to hang out with our mutual friends sometimes.
We get on each other's nerves if we have to spend more than a few days together though. When he came home from college the first time I had to once again get used to hair clogging the shower drain, unflushed toilets, and the little beeps AIM makes as he talked with his girlfriend hours after midnight. But, in the end, you can't pick your family and he was born first so he'll always be older.