My Name is Jaun. I am getting bigger and bigger, almost like my brother Carlos. I love playing with my brother Carlos. Carlos always comes up with the funnest games, like the one time we played that game where you had to drive our car all the way to the other side of the house. He told me I was breaking the rules when I made the big jumps, but I told him my car was a rocket car, so it could jump super far.

  My Brother is also super brave and strong. Once, I was playing in the park and a mean dog started chasing me while barking super angrily. I tried to run away, but the dog was too fast and tried to bite me. I climbed a tree because I was scared, and I am extra good at climbing trees. I was still scared, though, because the dog was jumping up at me while barking. I was crying because it was so scary, but Carlos wasn't. He ran to help me as soon as he saw I was in trouble. He grabbed a super big branch and started swinging it at the dog and shouting. The dog got scared off because Carlos is so big and strong, and ran away. My big brother always keeps me safe.

  Carlos is super smart too, he can answer all of my questions even though he is only 2 years older than me. When I asked him why it hurts when you touch hot stuff, he said it was because when you are doing something that hurts, it is bad for your body. When you touch something hot, your body does not like it, so it tells you it is bad for you by hurting.

  I asked him how he learned so much stuff, and he told me he learned it in school. He said they have teachers at school who you can ask anything, and they will tell you the answer. I never told him because he insisted that teachers are only at school, but I think Carlos is my teacher. I sometimes didn’t like it when Carlos went to school, and I had to stay home with Grandma by myself.

  I love my Grandma too, but she did not like playing games. She just sits in her comfy chair and asks me to sit with her.

  I would sit with her for hours while she told me stories about people who were no longer here. Grandma made it sound so important so I tried to pay attention to her stories. I knew the stories about my ancestors were important because Grandma said so. Sometimes I did not know how people from the past, whom I could never play with, could be that important. I felt bad for not believing Grandma after I thought that, so I tried extra hard to remember the next story she told me.

  I had trouble sitting still all the time. I sometimes just wanted to play with my cars or read a book about dragons. The ancestors were very important, but sometimes important things made me sleepy. I sometimes thought Grandma wanted me to fall asleep, because she would always tell the same stories about the least exciting ancestors. They just married and had a bunch of kids and never went on any adventures.

  Grandma would sometimes tell me and Carlos to do something called a Drill. A Drill was kinda like playing hide and go seek, but you had to be super quiet, and you always had to go and hide in the same place. We always hid in the same place. I would hide in the kitchen, where you had to lift a hidden lever to move the wall grate aside. Then Carlos would close the grate before he went to hide his special place somewhere in the cabinets. They both told me my hiding place was the best because I was the only person who could fit in it. I did not know why we could not play a normal game of hide-and-seek. I told Carlos it would be more fun, but he said a drill was not supposed to be fun. A drill was supposed to be practice for if bad men came into the house.

  I got scared that bad men might come to the house and cried for a long time. Mama came home when I was still crying and asked me why I was crying. When I told her about the drill, she told me that no bad men would be coming into the house. She gave me a bunch of kisses and read me a story, then lay with me in my bed until I fell asleep. I woke up later that night when I heard Mama yelling at Grandma. I did not know what she was yelling about, but she kept saying nothing was going to happen. It had been over 6 years.

  My Mama was the prettiest woman in the whole world. Sometimes Grandma told her she was too pretty and she should try harder to be less pretty. I did not know how Mama could try to be less pretty. Whenever she tried to be less pretty, I knew it did not work because she was still the prettiest. Grandma was always worrying about things, but Mama told me that I did not need to worry. I just needed to be a good boy and listen to Grandma and Mama, and everything would be good and happy.

  I did not get to be with my Mama very often because she was always working. I asked Mama why she had to work so much. She told me that she needed to work more because she did not go to school long enough, so she had to work extra hard because school was super important. Grandma did not like where Mama worked either; she was always telling Mama to find a place to work where so many people would not see her. Mama was something called a waitress. I did not know why it was dangerous for Mama to be seen, but Grandma would just say it is safer to live a quiet life out of sight. I did not know what that meant, but Mama said she would have to work even more if she did a different job, so I did not think Grandma’s idea was good.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  She would always tell me that she loved me when she was home, and pick me up and swing me around. I always loved swinging around in my Mama’s arms. Sometimes I thought she might be even stronger than Carlos because Carlos could not pick me up. Carlos told me that that was just because she was taller than him, so I guess when Carlos got taller, he could swing me around too.

  Carlos did not get swung around in Mama’s arms when she was home. He told me this was because he was growing up. He said he used to swing in Mama’s arms when he was little, like me. I wasn't excited about not getting to swing, so sometimes I did not want to grow up like Carlos.

  Mama would give me lots of kisses, too. I knew my Mama loved me a whole lot, so I did not want to tell her to stop, even though I did not like it when my cheek got all wet from the kisses. I knew that Carlos did not get as many kisses because he was old, and I thought it might not be too bad not to get as many slimy kisses when I get old.

  I did not know if I wanted to grow up like Carlos. I asked my Mama if there was a way to not grow up like Carlos, and she told me that she would let me swing in her arms as long as I wanted to. She told me that she did not do it for Carlos anymore because he did not want her to. I decided I would like to keep swinging no matter what, so maybe that meant that I was not going to grow up, even if I got bigger.

  I did not have a Daddy like some of the other kids who lived in the houses nearby. Once, I had asked my Grandma why I didn't have a Daddy like all the kids on TV did. Grandma had looked so sad that I wanted to take back my question. Even though she had looked sad, Grandma still told me the story.

  The first thing I learned about Daddy was that his name was also Carlos. I was confused when Grandma started talking about Carlos, so she explained that Daddy had the same name as my brother. I guess Daddy’s name was different, just like Mama’s name was Maria, and Grandma’s name was Esmeralda.

  Mama and Daddy had fallen in love when they were still in school. This sounded nice, I wanted to have more people that I loved because everyone I loved were my favorite people. Grandma said it was not bad for them to fall in love in school, but they had loved each other too much. They loved each other so much that baby Carlos was born. I was so worried, I loved Grandma a bunch, were we going to have another brother? Grandma laughed, which was good, because she was still looking sad about my question about Daddy.

  She told me that it was a special type of love that made babies. She said you can’t have that type of love unless you are older like Mama. I asked how old Mama was and learned that Mama was 24. I could count all the way to 20, so I knew it was bigger than that. I decided to learn how to count all the way to 24 so I could tell Mama I knew how old she was.

  Grandma kept telling me the story about Daddy. They had no money because they were still in school. They needed to have money to take care of baby Carlos, so they both had to leave school early. Mama had left school to care for Carlos, and Daddy had to work to earn money for them.

  Grandma went back to looking sad when she had said they had to leave school, so I figured out school was super important. I knew I would start going to school soon, but I wasn't sure when. I was going to try super hard in school so that Grandma would be happy again.

  When Daddy had been working to make money for the family, some bad men had tried to get him to work for them for even more money. Daddy did not want to work for the bad men, so he had told them no and tried to stay away from them. They would not let him say no, though, so they got angry and hurt him really bad.

  Mama and Daddy were scared of the bad men, so they had made plans to run away with baby Carlos. I was already in Mama’s tummy, so I was going to go with Mama too. Right when Daddy had gotten the whole plan together to run away from the bad men, the bad men found him. The bad men had done extra bad things to Daddy for trying to run away; now Daddy is dead, like the other ancestors.

  This story was not like the other stories Grandma told me about the ancestors. I did not feel sleepy at all. I did get super sad like Grandma because of this story. I climbed into Grandma’s lap, and we hugged while we were sad together.

  After we had cried together about the sad story about Daddy, I asked Grandma why she had never told me the story about Daddy before, even though she told me tons of stories about my other ancestors. She said that sometimes things are hard for Grandma, too.

  I was too afraid to ask where the bad men were now. I thought they might still be around because Mama and Daddy did not get to run away before the story was over. I remembered the Drill that Grandma kept making me and Carlos do, and thought that I would try extra hard to be fast like Grandma told me to be next time we did it.

  I asked Mama about Daddy after Grandma told me the story. She did not want to talk about what happened in the story. She did not cry like Grandma, but she told me I should not focus on sad things. She said that she loved Daddy more than she thought she could ever love someone until she met Carlos, then me.

  I told her that I love her and Grandma and Carlos more than anyone in the whole world. I hope we can stay together forever.