The fol­low­ing is an excerpt of my story “That Did It!” as it appears in “Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Fam­ily”. I truly hope that you enjoy it!

            My lit­tle brother, Gabriel, had a fear that never made sense to me, but was fun to mess around with from time to time.
            All I had to do was say, “That did it!” and he would take off run­ning and scream­ing for our father. He would run up and grab Dad’s leg, like lit­tle kids do. But as Gabriel got older, the weight of him would take Dad’s leg out every now and again. I started think­ing of it like bowl­ing!
            One time at a cook­out, I could see Dad talk­ing with some friends and hold­ing a plate of food in hand. I real­ized that Gabriel might just be able to take him down to the ground in front of an actual audi­ence. This was gonna be great! I looked over at Gabriel and yelled, “That did it!” and he took off, full tilt, right into the back of Dad’s leg. Dad never saw it com­ing, but he didn’t fall down, much to my dis­ap­point­ment. I can’t remem­ber if Gabriel got him to drop his plate, but I bet at the very least a hot dog was sac­ri­ficed to the Grass Gods.
            For the first few years of this, Dad would yell at Gabriel, and I would get away with it. I always won­dered if Dad believed that Gabriel had this com­pul­sion to run into him at full speed for no rea­son. How do you get a kid help for that?
            “Doc­tor, I think there’s some­thing wrong with my son. He keeps run­ning full speed into my leg for no rea­son. I don’t know why, but he won’t stop. Do you think he’s going insane?”
            Then, when Gabriel got old enough to artic­u­late why he was run­ning, I was blamed for it every time, whether it was my “That did it!” that did it or not. So, in a way, I guess it all bal­anced itself out.
            As for scar­ing Gabriel all the time, I couldn’t help myself. It was funny to see him take off, just a streak of blond hair and feet. I guess it also felt great to have that power over another per­son, even if he was only five.
            You see, in my every­day life, I was afraid of every­one, and I got teased and picked on by bul­lies half my size. So I got a chance to feel intim­i­dat­ing. But I also knew deep down that my teas­ing of Gabriel had no real last­ing effect after he ran away scream­ing. Dad would yell, and then Gabriel would always come right back and con­tinue what he was doing, mostly because my threat never led to any con­se­quence. I never hit him, or threw him in a room and locked it, or tick­led him until he peed him­self. Gabriel wasn’t afraid of me any other sec­ond of the day, and he had no need to be. But if I said, “That did it!” it sent him run­ning like he was late for a free ice cream give­away two towns over.
            Maybe he was fear­ful of me because I was ten years older than him. Or it could have been that I was his only brother, and things like that are ingrained in DNA. Also, at fif­teen years old, I had been big­ger than our father for about two years, mak­ing me the biggest per­son he knew. Scary to a lit­tle guy!
            Some­times, my intim­i­da­tion served a use­ful pur­pose. For exam­ple, if I wanted to sneak a kiss with my girl­friend, a “That did it!” would free us of an audi­ence in an instant.
            My favorite “That did it!” moment hap­pened early one Sat­ur­day morn­ing. I had spent the week­end over at Dad’s apart­ment and was watch­ing car­toons in the liv­ing room. Gabriel came walk­ing in care­fully car­ry­ing a bowl of Froot Loops. Every step he took sloshed Froot Loops up to the sides of the bowl, but not going over. Gabriel was happy with him­self and proud of the job he was doing, and I’ll never for­get the look on his face.
            Then I thought to myself, “You know, if I said a “That did it!” right here, right now, I bet he’d throw his bowl of cereal into the air and take off run­ning. Sure I’d get yelled at, and have to clean it up, but it’d be worth it.”
            I know. I’m a bad, bad brother. I don’t know why sib­lings do these things to each other, but we do.
            Then, I thought to myself, “If I do this, I can’t yell it. It was far too early for yelling, and I think I heard Dad walk­ing around. But would a “That did it!” even work with­out the yelling?“
            “Hey, Gabe…”
            “Yeah?” he replied, still con­cen­trat­ing on his task at hand.
            “That did it.”
            Gabriel froze. He looked at me and then back at the bowl. He was still a good five feet from the cof­fee table, and he tried to move quickly while his lit­tle eyes shifted back and forth from brother to bowl. Finally, he reached the table and sat the bowl down, not spilling a drop.
            Darn, he made it. Oh, well, I tried.
            That’s when Gabriel took off!
            All you could hear were the sounds of bare feet slap­ping on hard­wood floors and his high-pitched screams echo­ing in the hall­way. “Well, so much for being too early for yelling!” I thought to myself.
            That’s when I heard a crash and things falling, and my father yelled out a very loud obscen­ity.
            I had no idea what hap­pened, but I was afraid to move from the couch in the liv­ing room.
            “Ben, I ought to beat the heck out of you!” my father yelled out.
            I tried not to laugh as I ner­vously asked, “What happened?”

Find out what hap­pens by get­ting your own copy of “Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Fam­ily” avail­able at Barnes and Noble, and book­stores worldwide!