I feel like I can relate to Joseph’s brothers.

Joseph in the Bible was the perfect child. He knew it. His parents knew it. His brothers knew it. I can imagine the scene one morning where Joseph’s dad had just finished chewing out all the other brothers for leaving the door open all night, when Joseph comes whistling down the stairs to breakfast.

“Hey brothers.”

Silence.

“Oh I have to tell you about the craziest dream I had last night! So we’re in this field, and we each have sheaves of wheat, and…are you guys cold? It’s really cold in here. Did someone leave the door open again? Hang on.”

Silence. Joseph walks into the next room. The brothers hear, “Dad, did someone leave the door open all night?” Joseph returns bundled in his coat of many colors.

“Mmmmmm cozy. Anyways, all of your sheaves bow down to my sheaf! Crazy huh?! I wonder what it means!”

So you can understand why they would throw him into a pit. Was selling him into slavery a bit much? Well…maybe. But we all get carried away sometimes and Joseph seemed to do pretty well for himself after that, so all’s well that ends well.

Anyways, I feel like I can relate, because I have a Joseph in my own life.

Scott Joseph Brady.

My parents had five children because they are insane. I am the oldest. Then there’s Jesse, Sarah, Amanda and finally sweet, sweet baby Scott.

No parent knows what they’re doing when they have their first child. For example, I had a broken collarbone for the first few months of my life that never got fixed because the first doctor missed it and then my parents were just like, “Wow, I guess babies DO cry a lot.”

As the oldest, you’re kind of the experiment child. Parents try all sorts of things on you – some work and get reused on subsequent children. The other experiments can hopefully be reversed in therapy as an adult.

By the time the fifth child makes his grand appearance, parents have pretty much figured things out. They just throw the little one into the mix with all the other kids and enjoy the show. Because of this, the youngest child is usually the favorite.

That’s how it worked at our house. Scott Joseph, living up to his middle name, was the perfect child. While the rest of us would “cool off the neighborhood” by leaving the door open with the air conditioning on, Scott would remember to close it. When we would “live like money grows on trees” by leaving the lights on, he would turn them off. Our parents knew they had produced the perfect child. The kids knew it. And by that smug little smile on his face, we could tell Scott knew it too.

Of course my parents will never admit that Scott was the favorite. “You’re all my favorite,” my mom would say before giving Scott a suspiciously colorful coat.

“You’re all my favorite,” my mom would say before giving Scott a suspiciously colorful coat.

The thing that would annoy me most about sweet, sweet baby Scott is probably what annoyed Joseph’s brothers most too. He always seemed to get out of work. Remember when they threw Joseph into the pit? They were all working, while he was coming up for a visit.

I worked during the summers in high school. When I’d come home from a long day of work, I would have to walk around Scott and my sister Amanda, who’d be lying on the driveway eating freeze pops after a long day of playing in the pool. Then, during the fall, I’d find myself spending a cold Saturday with my dad cleaning the pool I never used. Long after dark, I’d be holding up the heavy vinyl side of the pool for my dad to scrub while Scott was in the house, probably snuggled up in his coat, because he was “just a boy.”

That’s why I got great, great joy from hearing about the night the rat showed up.

One night when Scott was in high school, he was shaken awake at 3 a.m. by my dad who said, “Hey. I need you in the basement.” Scott stumbled downstairs to find the doorway to the utility room barricaded with tables and chairs and all kinds of junk.

My dad explained to the confused, sleepy Scott that he had fallen asleep in his office chair, and kept waking up to the sound of scuffling near the dog’s food. Whenever he would move, the scuffling would stop. From there, he’d determined that a rat had come up through a drain and was hiding somewhere in the utility room. That seems like a pretty big jump, but the utility company was working on sewer lines nearby, so maybe? To this day, it remains unclear how exactly he came to this conclusion, and there is great debate whether he ever actually saw the rat in question.

Anyways, after explaining the situation, he revealed the master plan. He grabbed a BB gun, pumped it a few times, switched off the safety and handed it to Scott. “I’m going to start moving stuff. When the rat runs out, shoot it.”

There are a few things you should know that make this story much more enjoyable.

1. Scott had never held a gun in his life.
2. This was a school night.
3. My other brother remained sound asleep in the bed next to Scott’s. He was home on break from college and very available to shoot things at 3 a.m.

So for the next hour or so, Scott sat on an office chair behind the barricade, following my dad’s every move with a gun that he had no idea how to use. My dad worked slowly across the utility room, taking this opportunity to mop the floor behind things that rarely got moved. As the minutes ticked by, Scott got more and more sleepy, closing his eyes, but keeping his finger on the trigger. “I think it was the most tired I’ve ever been,” he said.

Finally, as morning was about to dawn, my dad determined that the rat must have run back down the partially opened drain underneath the wash basin. He excused Scott to go back to bed.

Scott woke up a few hours later wondering if the whole thing was a dream. When this Joseph went to breakfast and told everybody about his “dream,” though, things were a little different. This time, there were more than a few satisfied smiles.

LIFE LESSON #83

You don’t have to throw the favorite child in a pit to get back at him. Just wait until he’s the only one left to defend the house against a rat.