I am a 25 year old. I am an artist by trade. I listen to indie rock. I have been in a couple of bands through the years. I collect old cameras and I drink Pabst like it is coming back into style. I surround myself with great and very interesting friends. I am not square and I am not boring. My brother on the other hand, is a whole different story. He is married and in medical school. His wife is beautiful, smart and funny. He lives in a nicely decorated world full of Pier One furniture, Banana Republic clothes, and they share two cars; a Jetta sedan and a Saturn station wagon. My niece is a two year-old golden retriever named Lola. They go to the doggie park as a family.

My older (at 27) but smaller brother Chris and I have a lot in common. We both have the same sense of humor, the same outlook on life, the same politics (for the most part), and unfortunately we share the same hairline (thanks grandpa Merritt). In the course of our short lives our paths split. Sometime between my freshman and sophomore year at college I went through a bit of a transforming stage in my life where everything I liked in high school became insufferable and boring. At an early age, my brother received the 'memo.' Somehow, it just missed my inbox.

For years I thought my brother was the squarest kid I had ever met. He knew (maybe subconsciously), from the moment he stepped into high school that he was going to be a doctor and help people the rest of his life. He had always worn khakis and button-down blue shirts (easiest kid to shop for during the holidays) and he had always been the smartest kid on the block (I'm not trying to knock him here, he is fucking brilliant). He is everything that the American Ideal embodies: good looking, smart, funny and successful at whatever he does.

About three weeks ago, I visited my brother down at his home in New Orleans in a last ditch effort to enjoy the original city of sin without buying a hotel room. Aside from the booze and music, I was really there to hang out with my most beloved and closest relative. In a fit of drunken craziness on Bourbon Street, I realized something very deep and very beautiful and it changed my view on my brother and his lifestyle. While sitting high atop the dirtiest street in North America on a balcony with complete strangers all around me, drinking a 'huge-ass' 32 oz. beer and lecherously drooling at the bare breasted tourists in search of beads, I had an epiphany. My brother is really not that square. He is actually quite rectangular but with rounded, soft edges.

While atop this monstrosity of hedonism and alcohol indulgent city, I realized that my brother knew all along that he was going to live out the American dream but he was going to do it his way. He may have fit the mold at one point but somewhere along his path to 'squaredom' he stopped to pick the flowers and then stomp on some of them. Chris had become a compromise to the 'boring.' He was two parts straight and narrow and one part hellion.

And then it dawned on me. I always thought that he was square because somewhere deep down inside I was really jealous of him. I envied everything that he had in life. I called him 'square' out of spite and academic rage. He was always successful at the things that he loved and cared deeply about and it cut into my lazy dreams and desires like a chainsaw. He had always had the best looking girlfriend, the friends that I dreamed of having one day, the perfect academic record, and the best t-shirt collection including the coveted 'Dead Milkmen' shirt that I stole from his dresser every chance I got. I worshipped the ground he walked on as many younger brothers do. He was my idol and when I didn't end up just like him, I gave heated excuses to people who wondered why. "I am not my brother, we are way different."

The night after we ran Bourbon Street ragged we spent the morning nursing headaches and tried to figure out who we wanted to see at Jazz Fest that afternoon. I was sitting in his living room and sifting through his CD collection and I found some solid proof that my older brother was just as proud of me as I was of him. I physically stumbled when I noticed that he owned the Dropkick Murphys live CD. He looked at me and told me flat out:

"I bought that CD because I knew you were at that concert."

This stunned me. He was tracking my life with a sense of accomplishment, just as I had when I had followed his every move when we I was 10 and he was 12. I looked to the right of the CD rack and saw the set of three photographs I had given to him for Christmas a few years before. While he unwrapped them in our family's living room, my mother and father had rolled their eyes with a look of "Oh shit, Ian's trying to be artsy in front of his brother again."

Then Chris said, "I really love those photographs. They look frickin' great above our fireplace. They are awesome photos."

I almost lost it. It was the last straw -- a compliment on my artwork? Within twenty-four hours, we had come full circle as a dynamic duo. I had finally realized that my brother was well-rounded guy who wasn't very square at all and he had finally accepted the fact that his brother wasn't as much of a fuck-up as his grades had proven. If I weren't so hung over, I would have cried. Instead, I hugged my brother and punched him in the ribs. It's much easier to beat up the ones you love than be a sissy and weep like a widow (although I cried through most of his wedding).

I realized during that long weekend that my brother lived the life of a 'square' but he wasn't about to let the square life keep him from having fun and being a good person with devilish tendencies. He was forced to answer to 'the man' (as we all end up doing in this society) but he wasn't about to answer for 'the man.' He received the 'memo' years ago but during the last ten years, he rewrote most of it. He doesn't care about money, big cars, or having the largest home. He cares about being a good husband, being a good brother, a honest doctor, loving his family, helping those in dire need, and above all, being happy. He is far from boring. If that's being 'square,' then sign me up. I just don't really have a good chance at getting into medical school anytime soon. I think I need to brush up on my biology first.

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