Sometimes, Brad would walk by me and whisper things such as "You're Ugly!" or "When I grow up, I'm gonna get a machine gun and kill you!". Scared me to death because I never doubted him. Although, sometimes I wonder if my parents treatment of him had anything to do with his behavior.  After all, I can remember my dad feeding him tablespoons full of pepper for saying a cuss word; or whipping him with a belt on his bare behind for some infarction, while I maybe got time in the corner for the exact same infarction.   My parents showed blatant favorism, I’m convinced that had something to do with everything that happened, although my parents I’m sure will go to their graves saying that it’s all design.   My father was the king of empty promises back then.  I used to get all the stories from him about how someday a prince would ride up on a white horse and take me away and we’d live happily ever happy.  From the time I was very little, there was a clear plan that my parents had for me and I became convinced that it was the only plan.  During this time, I started developing “Night terrors”.  I remember waking up in the middle of the night, screaming thinking I saw Brad standing at my bedroom door. My mother would always come in and Brad was never there.

As my parents had more children, they needed a bigger house, so they bought one on Laura Lane in Pleasanton. It was on the border of Sunol and came with a some land. This was where a lot of the nightmares in my family happened.   Now that I live closer to where I grew up, I sometimes visit this house; the memories there are so devastating to me now and it seems like such a sad place.   I remember once, when the banister was missing from our house in Pleasanton (which was most of the time we were living there); it was a tr i-level house, so the stairs "switch-backed" each other. I remember coming down the stairs one day and Brad ran up behind me and pushed me off the edge. I landed on the lower stairs and -rolled the rest of the way down to the family room. My inner thigh was severely scrapped and eventually turned into a really nasty looking bruise, which was hard to explain during gymnastic practice. I didn't break any bones that day.  The stairs weren’t an ally to Brad though.  I remember a few times, my father throwing Brad off the stairs from the kitchen, which was located on the middle floor of the house to the downstairs portion of the house.  It wasn’t a huge drop, but scary none the less.  My father is admittedly, not a “Kid” person.  Ya think?