What I learned

I have always known my brother was different. From the day he was born he was hooked up on beeping machines and glow fingers, he wasn’t on them for very long but enough to make me always remember the way they sounded. I knew he had a scar on his chest, I knew he looked different from me. I always just wanted to know why. I would never know why until middle school. Middle school was when I started noticing the kids that where different. I noticed the kids that screamed down the hall, the ones who hit themselves or walked around with vests. I noticed that kids like me did those things but some kids it seemed like they had no idea they where doing it. They where like the kids my mother always talked about, the ones she came home raving about how amazing they were, the ones that sounded like Radney. My brother talked about those kids too and after a while so did I. I started asking what was wrong with them, why they did the things they did. My mom never knew how to explain it to me. She just said “Go play with your brother.” I always did. After a while Radney started to tell me that he had Down syndrome. That is when I realized that he indeed was different, just like the kids at school. During elementary school, I always thought that all of the different things he did, was just Radney. Like the fact, he enjoyed Barbie’s just as much as I did. That was just Radney. I started asking more questions and demanding answers. Why doesn’t he look like me? Why does he act young? I just wanted to know why. That is when my parents sat me down and talked about it. “Radney has an extra chromosome” My mom said, “He was born that way.”
This made no sense, how could someone be born with an extra chromosome. What even is a chromosome? “It is a gene,” My dad claimed, “It is something we all have that makes us who we are.” It is just who we are. Those words set home to me. My brother was made different then me, and so are those kids at school. God made us who we are;