Invisible Toast, and other tales of sibling rivalry

It’s no coincidence that Earth’s first born human, Cain, killed his brother Abel on only page three of the Bible. Cain was jealous that Abel had come up with a better gift idea. Actually, anyone who spends time around siblings is only surprised that it took that long.

When friends recently visited with their two young sons, I took special pains to give the boys presents which were absolutely identical. “I know the problems caused by presents which are different,” I mentioned to their father.

“Different PRESENTS?” he exclaimed, eyes widening in remembered terror. “We had World War III on Christmas Day over identical light sabers that were only different COLOURS!”

Boys haven’t changed at all. When my sons Dave and Tom were pre-schoolers our entire existence had to be organized around the principle of Everything Being Exactly the Same; otherwise, we had to manage eruptions of sibling rivalry that can seem, to outsiders, completely irrational.

“Human beings are not creatures of logic,” Dale Carnegie wrote in 1936. “We are creatures of emotion. Our logic is as a birch bark canoe, cast upon the dark and stormy seas of emotion.”

My favourite example of this kind illogic and irrationality occurred one winter morning, when Tom was happily passing the time feeding me “Invisible Toast.” He would walk across the room, pretend to take invisible toast out of an invisible toaster, then deliver it to me. I would pretend to take it from him, and pretend to eat it.

This game kept him busy for several minutes until his big brother Dave arrived and noticed what was going on. On the next trip across the room, Dave grabbed Tom’s hands and “wrestled” the invisible toast away from him.

Tom collapsed screaming to the floor. “Dave took my toast! Dave took my toast!” he wailed at the top of his lungs. His face reddened, he gasped for air, and showed all signs of being ready to slip into convulsions.

“Tommy, Tommy, it’s just pretend!” I pointed out, logically. “You can pretend you have more toast…make some more, and I’ll eat it.”

Nothing doing. The wailing continued. Dave was clinging to the invisible toast with all his strength, and gloating over his toast-stealing victory.

“Tom, the first toast was just pretend,” I reasoned again. “Pretend some more toast, and I’ll eat it.”

“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!” he wailed, inconsolably. “I want Dave to give me back THAT toast!”

It seemed there was nothing to do but insist that Dave return the stolen invisible toast. “David, give the toast back to Tom,” I instructed.

Grudgingly, Dave “handed” the invisible toast back to Tom, who delivered it to me, who pretended to eat it. Tom was content. Fantasy trumped reality. I accepted the fact that you can’t always be logical or rational when dealing with siblings. Peace was restored.

As the years went by, we had hundreds of instances during which the two brothers competed fiercely for…well, everything that exists and lots of stuff that doesn’t. Who wrote the best essay; who had the first girlfriend; who got the coolest job; who got the most university scholarships; who had the handsomest beard; who bought the best Mother’s Day present.

“Invisible toast” became our family shorthand for the nonsensical rivalries and jealousies that erupted over the years, providing an instant definition of any situation that was based on nothing tangible, but undeniably painful all the same. Even when words or actions impacted nothing but the ego or the imagination, they still had impact.

“You two,” I fumed one day after listening to an hour of arguing on some mundane topic. “On your deathbeds, you’ll still be arguing over Invisible Toast!”

“Yeah, we will,” Dave, now an army officer, agreed completely. “And my invisible toast will be so much more rad than Tom’s!”

“In your dreams,” sneered Tom, now an economist. “You will only wish your invisible toast could compare to mine, you loser!”

It’s not rational; but, it’s real.

–Rita Smith