Joel, the Brother Whom I Slept With

September 30, 2025 Journal No Comments

Joel’s birthday is on September 30th, 6 days after Mom’s birthday and 7 days before Matt’s.

Preface: If you have read my story about my younger brother, Dael, you saw that there was another brother that arrived after me and before Dael. That was Joel. I was 17 months old when Joel was born, and I do not remember any details about the day he was born. My earliest memory, however, is of living in Mishawaka, Indiana, which is next to South Bend where Joel was born. Of the five brothers in our family, Joel and I are the closest in age. In retrospect, psychologically speaking, I may have been deprived of my parents’ attention because Joel needed to be born so soon after I was. But I hadn’t thought about that up to this moment, and I see no purpose in thinking about it now or in the future. The primary result of our being so close in age is that while growing up we spent a lot of time in each other’s company. That means we could have had a lot of adventures together. We did, sort of, but as things turned out, Joel wasn’t quite as adventurous as I was.

The Earliest Adventure
We did not live on a Navy base in Indiana. We lived in a single-family house in a neighborhood of families more or less like ours. One of my earliest recollections of Joel is of him sitting in a high chair, spoon in hand banging on his tray, saying, “Food me. Food me.”

Once Joel began talking he always found things to talk about. In that way, he was a lot more social than I was. So it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that Joel made friends on our first adventure.

I was four years old and Joel was about three. Mickey was at school and Dad had gone to work. Mom always had things to do in the house, and on a sunny day in the early fall, Joel and I were outside, playing. There was nothing unusual about two toddlers playing outside in their yard, unsupervised. In Mishawaka, Indiana in those days, there wasn’t much to be afraid of.

With Mickey at school, and nobody else around, it dawned on me that I was the older brother and I had to take care of Joel. Taking care of Joel was not something I was enthusiastic about doing, but I found honor in having the responsibility. It made me feel more grown-up. Bored with hanging around the house, I told Joel we should go to the store. Joel agreed. So we went.

The store was a few blocks up the street. I imagine, though I have no specific recollections, that Mom took us to that store once or twice before, walking. She did not go there frequently at all. It was a general store, and I don’t remember what Mom would go there for, but I believe it had little toys I liked to look at.

Anyway, I knew the store was there. I did not realize at the time that even though the store was just a few blocks away, people were expected to develop sophisticated navigational skills before making the trek unsupervised. Joel and I started walking up the street, casually, like it was something we did everyday. Joel kept a conversation going as we walked. To me, everything he said was fine, I had no arguments.

The neighborhood streets were quiet. But we had to cross a street with a traffic light before we got to the store. To me this was no problem. I had crossed many downtown streets with Mom and Dad whenever we would go shopping downtown. When the light was green, Joel and I walked across the street.

I don’t think we went in the store, as my arms were too short to reach the doorhandle. We looked at the display in the window, marveled at it, talked about things we wished we had, and then we turned back. We crossed the street again, and walked up the street we came on. Along the way, a gray-haired man said hello to us, a few more words to Joel, and gave him a nickel.

That was one of the perks of being sociable. Old men and sometimes women, stopped to talk a little, and they gave things to Joel.

What changed this simple, mundane story of two toddlers meandering innocently to the neighborhood store into an adventure was the fact that Mom was outside, tapping her foot, when we got home. She was agitated and exercised, not angry. When she scolded us, I was not completely sure what she scolded us for. “What if a car hit you?” was all I heard.

This would not be the last time one of our adventures made our mother worry.

The Brother Whom I Slept With
To be clear, in our family, each of us had his own bed. However there were times when we would visit relatives, or relatives would visit us, and kids were called upon to double up in twin beds at night. Naturally, this always meant that Joel and I had to share a bed.

I hated that arrangement because . . . well, Joel and I had different habits. He liked sleeping, I liked being awake. He would curl up in bed, which I thought was childish and not what a man would do. He would roll around and steal the blankets. Enough said.

There were other occassions when Joel and I shared a bed. We always got sick together, and Mom would put us both in her and Dad’s big bed so she could take care of both of us at the same time.

I don’t know what order the diseases came in, but it went something like this: Joel got the mumps and the next day I had the mumps. I came down with the measles, then they’d see measles on Joel. When Mom or Dad saw symptoms of chickenpox in one of us, they automatically assumed the other of us had the chickenpox too.

Far from feeling miserable, whenever Joel and I were sick together, we had games to play, tv shows to watch, and even a little mischief to get into.

The games to play were children’s board games and card games with big colorful cards – things like that. But that’s not all. We had our own games that we made up.

When we weren’t sick, when we lived in Nebraska, Joel and I spent a lot of time in a tree in the front yard. We would “play stories,” stories of adventure and drama, inspired by things we would see on TV. Neither of us was ever the bad guy. We were always cooperative heroes, or a hero and a sidekick. Joel’s favorite character, Jim, would occasionally morph into a monkey that kept my character, who had no name, company. There was always a pretty girl to rescue and join our journey. She was always invisible, which was an improvement over any real girls in the neighborhood.

When we were sick, the big bed became a great stage for “playing stories.” We could hide under blankets, or stack pillows or use them for ammunition. Joel could play a loyal monkey if he wanted to, but I think he started developing a new character during these times he was sick in bed: a doctor.

When we’d play army or some adventure story outside with other kids, Joel got good at doctoring. If someone got shot or wounded in any way, Joel didn’t even need to examine the injury. He’d wave his hands quickly over the wound, make a few medically-related sounds with his voice, and pronounce the patient “all fixed up” and get him back in the action.

When we were sick, Joel didn’t usually play a doctor because, ironically, we didn’t need one. If either one of us got injured in a “story” we played, there was nothing a short visit under the blanket-tent or an above-surface pillow fight couldn’t cure. But I think the days of illness helped Joel develop his doctor character because that is when we became most exposed to daytime TV soap operas.

Back then, television had a lot of hospital scenes. There were two prime time doctors already – Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare – which we kids never watched, but we knew about them from TV advertisements. It seemed that all the other shows always found an opportunity to put someone in a hospital.

Then there were the daytime soap operas, which targeted women like my mother, who stayed home most days. I personally could not stand these programs. The mere sound of an organ was irritating and conjured up dreary feelings such as I would feel every Sunday, especially after hearing a church organ on an early Sunday morning TV program.

Back to the big ol’ sick bed, … well, we were sick, and couldn’t keep the energy up all day. So we did see some television – daytime television. I did not watch any of these programs intently, and I don’t think Joel did either. But I think the exposure to the hospital room as the venue for drama where doctors and nurses are heroes helped in part in guiding Joel in his career decisions.

By the way, we saw some nighttime programs in that big bed, too. We may not have been sick when we watched the Wizard of Oz in that room. But I do think Joel and I were sick when “Peter Pan” (with Mary Martin) came to Television.

Making a Splash in Kansas

In Overland Park, Kansas, we lived in a nice two-story house at the end of a street where a large grassy yard ran down to a creek that was usually nearly dry. We call the house Lindenhouse for being located on Linden Street.

My father had retired from the Navy when we moved to Kansas. We all completed high school in Overland Park. My timing may be off, but I believe both Joel and I were still in high school when we had one of our greatest adventures.

We were both at home that day, which I think was a Saturday or Sunday, because we had neither school nor a menial job to go to. It was raining and raining and raining all over town. We could see water building up in the streets. Down at the corner of our street and a major thoroughfare, we could see cars splashing through giant puddles. Some kids had gotten together to help a car or two get past the puddles. They also had fun splashing in the middle of a road.

Joel and I went down there too. We helped one car get through. After that most of the other kids went home. But a few decided to go up to a nearby strip mall to see how traffic was doing up there. Joel and I decided to follow that group. We would be splashing in water all the way. So we took our shoes off. We put them on higher ground next to the creek.

The creek, by the way, was really active. Water was rushing through more rapidly than we had ever seen before.

As we expected, the road to the strip mall, was more than ankle deep in water. It was fun prancing and hopping and taking extra-long strides in the water on our way to the strip mall. We did not even see the other people who said they were going there.

There is a major highway to cross to get to the strip mall. We crossed it easily for there were few cars struggling to make their ways up or down the road.

The water at the strip mall was not as deep as we had seen on the roads near our house. In fact the rain seemed to be letting up and everything seemed much quieter.

I suppose we splashed around in that area for a little while, before turning around and going home. The water was subsiding. We walked barefoot along the road we had come on. The water was already not even ankle deep.

When we got down to the crossroad, there was a small crowd of people and a rescue vehicle over where the creek was. Up just a little from the crowd, Mom was standing there, with a very serious expression. As Joel and I crossed the road and Mom spotted us, her expression changed to a grimace. As we came closer, we could see she was holding our shoes.

“Someone fell in the creek,” she said. “When I saw the rescue vehicle I came down here to see if you two were alright. Then I saw your shoes by the creek. What was I supposed to think?”

Mom had a knack for acknowledging humor even where it doesn’t belong. After a few minutes she laughed and cried at the same time. I’ll have to tell you more about that when I tell you about my adventures with Mom.

What I want you to know about Joel, though, is that he has succeeded in life in ways many people have not. This is not to say it has been any easier for him than anyone else. However he has had one advantage many people have not had. From a very early age he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. Somehow he had a notion that he would be a doctor. That notion stuck with him throughout all his years in school, and in university where he studied medicine.

Here’s a little story – an adventure that Joel had without me – that illustrates how dedicated a doctor Joel has become:

Very early one morning, a drunk driver must have lost control of his vehicle and let it slam into the side of Joel’s house, causing significant damage. Joel ran out of his house to catch up with the drunk driver who ran away from the scene of the crash. When Joel caught up with him, there was no yelling, or trading insults, or threats of violence. No, Joel examined the man for possible injuries.