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My identical twin and I were one, two, maybe three years old, young enough that we were still sleeping in baby cribs. Did we each have a crib or did we share one? I don\u2019t know. My mother told me about this, and nobody who can remember is still alive, except for my sister Lynda, and I\u2019m not going to bother fact checking with her.<\/p>\n
It was after midnight. Bill woke up and started crying\u2014loud enough to wake my parents in the next room. They rushed in to see what was wrong. Bill was screaming, screaming. They quickly picked him up, checked to see if a diaper pin had come loose and was sticking him. Remember diaper pins? Nobody uses them anymore. \u00a0They tried burping him, walking the floor with him, singing a lullaby. He kept frantically crying. Nothing they did calmed him. And then one of my parents looked into the crib and saw that I was folded in on myself like a ball, silent and turning blue. Immediately they put Bill down and picked me up. As soon as they picked me up, Bill quit crying and went back to sleep. Too young to speak or to comprehend, my brother somehow woke from sleep and sensed that I was in trouble and could not call for help, so he cried for help for me. Once they picked me up and he knew I was being taken care of, he went back to sleep.<\/p>\n
They rushed me to the hospital where it was discovered that I had an intestinal obstruction, and the doctor had to remove part of my large intestine.<\/p>\n
While I was in the hospital, I refused to eat. Meanwhile, back at home, when our older sisters fed my twin, he ate half his food and set the other half aside to save for me. I continued to refuse food until they brought Bill in to see me. We shared my meals, and I got better and was soon allowed to go home.<\/p>\n
Some years later\u2014I must have been four or five by then\u2014it happened again, not my brother waking to rouse my parents but the same kind of obstruction. And again, I was rushed to the hospital and Doc Peegram performed another operation. By-the-way, the hospital had strict rules about allowing visitors under a certain age. They were so strict about it that even our doctor couldn\u2019t allow for an exception, so both times he put my twin on a gurney and snuck him into my room disguised as another patient\u2014or, I guess, disguised as me. Nobody who saw him could tell the difference.<\/p>\n
When I was finally sent home, I was sporting a five-inch scar on my lower stomach. I presume it must have been bandaged. It was summertime. I was playing on the sidewalk in front of our house, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. A neighbor, who knew I had been in the hospital, saw me and asked, \u201cBill, how\u2019s your brother?\u201d<\/p>\n
Summoning up the most scathing indignation a four-year-old could possibly summon up, I shoved my shorts down to my knees and pointed at my scar and said, \u201cCan\u2019t you see I\u2019m Alec!\u201d<\/p>\n