Today is my brother Aaron’s birthday. He came along five years after me, which is just enough of a gap to make childhood a little lopsided. At first, he wasn’t much fun to play with (it’s hard to play driveway basketball with a toddler). But once he got big enough for me to boss around, we had a much better time. Five years is a decent gap when you’re young. An 8th grader doesn’t always want his 3rd grade brother tagging along. Or his 11-month-old baby brother either (sorry, Philip). So no, we weren’t the closest of brothers growing up. There’s only so much common ground to be found when one of you is trading baseball cards and the other is trading crayons for fruit snacks.

I’d like to think I wasn’t an especially mean older brother (though the brotherly-love scale is always skewed by perspective). Sure, I picked on him some. I’m pretty sure if you graphed it, the bullying would peak right in the golden years of junior high. But as it goes with time, the gap between us started to shrink and suddenly we weren’t just brothers who shared parents. We were peers.

As adults, life gave us the chance to work together for over a decade, and for the past 13 years we’ve even been neighbors. Not under the same roof (we haven’t lived together in 25 years) but just down the road. Close enough to borrow tools, trade beers, and stay a part of each other’s everyday lives. That’s been one of the real privileges of adulthood: getting to know Aaron not just as my brother, but as a colleague, a neighbor, and a friend.

So happy birthday, Aaron. You’ve gone from the little kid I picked on, to the brother I respect, to one of my best friends. You turned out alright, thanks to me.