By the time I finish the letter, it’s the dinner hour and I’m hungry. I leave my room and pass the den, where Alan’s in his usual spot. He’s taken off his shoes and socks, and with his eyes firmly fixed on the TV screen, he’s bent his leg around so that he can sniff his toes. I’ve learned to take his idiosyncrasies in stride, but as a kid, I was often furious with him. Incensed that he would pick his nose and eat it in public. That he would scratch himself in private places and then sniff his fingers. That he would wander into our baseball or touch football games with no sense that he was interfering.

And that he wouldn’t listen.

The paterfamilias gave him chores, but he’d lose interest and then I’d have to do his chores as well as mine. The paterfamilias would punish him for not doing his chores by sending him to his room, but unless someone stood guard, Alan would wait a little while and then go back to the boob tube. When the paterfamilias removed the round plastic channel dial, Alan found some pliers and used them to turn the small metal post that changed the channels. When the paterfamilias took away the pliers, Alan searched until he found them. When the paterfamilias hid the pliers where Alan couldn’t find them, my brother lay down on the kitchen floor and made us step over him.

When we were smaller, the paterfamilias would spank us both, but Alan got the worst of it. The paterfamilias would come home from work angry and wallop him for the merest transgression. As if spanking were a way for the paterfamilias to get out his frustrations with work and life, and Alan was the easiest target. The paterfamilias used to spank us with his hand until the day he hurt his wrist and couldn’t play tennis for a few weeks. Then he started to use a yellow plastic Wiffle bat until I found it in his closet and threw it down the storm sewer. But it wasn’t long before I wished I hadn’t. Having lost the Wiffle bat, Dad turned next to a wooden racquetball paddle.

Ultimately, the spankings were meaningless. Alan would cry, and then stop crying and go back to the TV. Eventually he gave up lying on the kitchen floor. If he couldn’t change the channel to the station he wanted, he’d watch whatever station was on.