The first time my brother was chased
It's his first real run-in with hoodlums and maybe the first time he realizes not everyone is his friend.
It’s the early ‘90s before playdates are a thing and unsupervised children of all ages run wild in the neighborhood without a parent in sight.
Every day, I pick my brother up from school. I’m in 12th grade and he’s in second.
As soon as we get home, he immediately heads to the garage to get his bike. He asks if he can ride around for a bit. I tell him yes, but don’t stay out too long. He knows what too long means. It means to come home before the afternoon sun fades and Mom and Dad are home. It means come home before I have to hunt you down. He promises not to be too long and pedals away.
My brother is besties with our two-houses-down neighbor Jason, a Filipino kid with big round eyes and a voice like he could be the fourth chipmunk from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Despite being a few years older, Jason is a head shorter than my brother. For the most part, they get along great, playing cops and robbers, riding bikes, or giggling next to each other on their Nintendo Game Boys.
Jason, being nine and more experienced in the ways of the world, would sometimes take advantage of my brother’s naivety. At times, it’s illustrated in an unequal toy swap—Jason’s raggedy action figure for my brother’s brand-new Leonardo Ninja Turtle with spinning arms. Other times, he convinces my brother to play a fun game of “jumping off the bed of his dad’s truck” until my brother falls the wrong way and breaks his forearm—a break so clean his left arm looked like it had two elbows.
With the sun on his face and the wind at his back, my brother exudes the kind of pure, unfiltered joy that comes so naturally at his age. Words that describe my brother at age seven: troublemaker, rambunctious, hyper, silly, a total people person.
He’s wearing tube socks on his hands again. He’s such a ham, I wonder if he saw some other kid with socks on his hands and is copying him. I look out the window and see the two of them ride away from our cul-de-sac street and disappear toward the park.
A few hours go by and the house is still, a sign my brother isn’t home. I walk over to Jason’s and ring the doorbell. His older sister tells me she just got home and hasn’t seen Jason or my brother.
I move on to the next neighbor, who lives at the end of the block. These neighbors are from Indonesia and don’t have any kids who are my brother’s age. They have a pair of cherry red Porches always parked on their driveway and a Streetfighter machine in their garage.
I can’t remember exactly when my brother saw the video game in their garage, but like a moth to a flame, it was game over. He was in there every chance he got, trying to improve his Streetfigher skills. He’d hang out there so much that I finally had to tell him “older people don’t want a little kid hanging around them all the time.”
I’m constantly annoyed by my brother, so I assume other people are too. But they don’t seem to mind that the hyper kid from down the street is always at their house.
I approach the house expecting to see my brother standing at attention in his usual spot. He’s not quite tall enough to see the screen at a good enough angle but he’s always so immersed in the game, he doesn’t seem to care. One hand firmly grasps the joystick while the other wildly slams on the buttons. Most of the time he never senses that I’m standing right behind him. I’m always the bearer of bad news telling him it’s time to come home.
When I walk by, though, he’s not there. I’m not sure where else to go, so I scan the park with no luck.
I hope he hasn’t gone too far. Once, he called me from a payphone and sounded distraught because he was lost and wasn’t sure how to get home. He said he was in front of Circle K near our house, so I drove over and picked him up.
I return home and wait. When it’s nearly dark, I hear him ride into the garage. His bike abruptly hits the ground with a loud clang and I hear the hum of the garage door close. My brother rushes inside looking panicked, panting, and eyes wide.
“They were chasing me!” he sobs. “They wanted my bike and I told them no and I started running away!”
I notice he still has the socks on his hands and he is visibly shaking.
“Wait, who was chasing you?” I demand.
“These guys. Me and Jason were riding around and then Jason left me. Then these older boys told me to give them my bike and started chasing me.”
He’s talking fast in between big gulps of tears. I wondered if they were right on his tail and if they saw which house he went into. They are probably some loser-wannabe gangsters who have nothing better to do than hang out at the park and bully little kids.
I try to calm him down but I’m pissed at Jason. I want to wring his little neck. I feel bad that my brother is so frightened but relieved nothing terrible happened to him. I advise him not to ride so far away from the house. Better yet, don’t ride at all for the next few days.
It’s his first real run-in with hoodlums and maybe the first time he realizes not everyone is his friend.
I suspect my brother was trying to talk to these boys and wonder if he said anything that provoked them to take his bike. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did, but come on, he’s only seven. Even if my brother said something stupid, these guys should’ve just ignored him.
This incident may not sound like a big deal because my brother was safe and still in possession of his bike. And for a long time, I never really thought too deeply about it.
But that day, a little piece of my brother’s innocence died as he pedaled away like his life depended on it. He got a taste of how scary and unfriendly people can be. I’m quite certain he also felt violated, which is how everyone probably feels when someone tries to take something without permission.
This moment haunted him. Even as an adult, he recounted the chase, how scared he was, and how he barely got away.