by Ted Sherman

Created on: July 14, 2009

Joey's brother Sammy's great invention happened thirty years ago. However, whenever they get together these days and repeat the story of Sammy's crazy miracle, they become laugh-till-they-cry, back-slapping kids again.

Sammy wasn't the same kind of baseball-playing, goof-around kind of kid Joey was. Although he was a year older, by the time Joey was 12, he was already taller and huskier than his older brother. Sammy wore thick glasses and never seemed to put on much weight or muscles.

There were many times at school when Joey had to protect little Sammy from bullies and kids calling him names. Hey, skinny. Yah, four eyes. Yo, nerd boy. And some worse. He was also jeered for always needing to be protected by his baby brother.

One place Sammy did shine was in the classroom. He studied hard and got great grades, much higher than Joey's. The other kids added teacher's pet to their name-calling, because Sammy was always the first to answer questions, and was never wrong.

He was in high school when he came up with his great invention. The science teacher let Sammy spend most of his class time on his own projects. She knew the brainy student was always way ahead in the simple-minded class subjects the other kids struggled to understand.

One day, as the brothers met after class, Sammy showed Joey his latest experiment. It was a model airplane, but not the store-bought kind from a kit made of balsa wood, tissue paper and glue. It was one he had constructed from scratch with plastic and aluminum in the school machine shop. The creativity was no surpise to his brother, because Joey had seen other advanced science stuff Sammy had done. He shrugged and told his little older brother the toy airplane looked just fine.

Sammy stopped and punched up at Joey's taller and broader shoulder. Hey, kid bro, this is no toy! It's the model of a real glider I'm making. And, what's more, when I finish, you're gonna fly it right off the roof of our house! Although a knot of fear hit Joey then, he didn't have the heart to tell his brother the little guy was totally off his rocker. Joey just smiled and nodded, expecting Sammy would soon lose interest in the nutty glider idea and go on to a new science project.

No such luck. Sammy considered Joey the brave one in the family. Maybe the word should be foolhardy. The big younger brother was always the first to do something dangerous. Jump off the big rock into the pond. Stand on his moving bike. Explode fireworks under tin cans. Run through the girls'

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