Kid Treats Family Photo Like His Own Album Cover

Had to put this picture up here as it's probably the last time I was bigger than you. Summer of '94 I think? For those who don't know, the Lyman and Williams families, along with the Yassos and Santees, spent nearly every summer from the mid-80s to the mid-90s taking their collective 10+ children on wild adventures involving epic sand castle construction, being launched into the air by a speedboat-towed tube, original Lyman's Own™ campfire stories (Seneca Sam forever!), boogie boarding, eating metric tons of Spaghetti-Os and Mac'n'Cheese, scavenger hunts that may have included unfound candies from previous years, countless games of beach horseshoes, kissing way too many live fish, water balloon launchers/water balloon launcher-related injuries, and (as we children later found out) an unhealthy amount of bare-naked midnight water skiing. See, our dads all know each other from playing rugby together, which --for any normal Americans reading this-- is just football without the forward pass, huddles, or protective gear of any kind. So they were all blood brothers, in that it's highly likely that at one time or another they'd smashed their beat up bodies together and literally exchanged blood. And those insane rugby-playing 20- and 30-something guys all settled down (somewhat...they were the naked water skiers, after all), got married, and started having kids at roughly the same time 40-or-so years ago, so all us kids were basically extended family.

Like all kids, we grew up. We went to different schools, ended up in different states, and now that we're all living all over the place (mostly Bryn and Steve, who both fled the country) we don't get to see each other as regularly as we did when we had those yearly summer adventures. We've mostly seen each other on special occasions as we've gotten older: holidays, weddings, and in my case the odd trip down to the farm back when I was living in New York. But since we're family, every time we've gotten together it's like no time has passed. I know there's plenty of people here who know this weird and wonderful man known as James much better than I do. I've been in Chicago for almost 9 years and my folks have been out of Pennsylvania for even longer, so my trips down to the farm don't come as easily or as often as they used to. And now I've got my own baby Asa James to look after. Besides, to me you'll always be my little brother Jamie, even though you've been bigger than me since shortly after this picture was taken. And in a way this is a strangely familiar situation. Here we are and we've been goofing off, laughing, and generally having a blast together for a long time, but time flies when you're having fun and now it's getting late. I'd hoped we'd have more time to play. Cheers, brother.