Maybe it would help if we moved to Philadelphia.

Brothers are a wondrous thing. Quarrels between them never last, wounds of both the physical and emotional kind heal with lightening speed, and there is always someone who will laugh rather than scowl when you fart.

For brothers, tattling seems to come with unspoken guidelines. It's perfectly acceptable to tell on your brother when he does something to harm or annoy you, but to rat on your bro for jumping on his bed after "lights out" will bring you no satisfaction, but rather shame and dishonor. Unfortunately, boys are rough, and most of the tattling in our home comes from a wrestling match getting out of hand. One child will cross the line between playful jabs and malicious wallops, and then everything is fair game, including intentional knees to the groin or running to mom and crying foul.

Drew has a capacious vocabulary in a language that we have yet to identify. We're thinking it might be a combination of German and Mandarin Chinese. While we don't understand the majority of what he says, he jabbers along at a rapid pace, fully expecting an intelligent reply to whatever nonsense to which he is informing us. We usually reply with an, "Uh-huh," and then wonder if we told him that he could, in fact, take the car keys and practice his parallel parking. There is one phrase that we understand enough of to know how to respond. It goes something like this:

"Maa-oom? Eee-tah hitted meanowhytosaw!" Which means: "Mom, Ethan hit me and I want you to punish him!" ("Ethan" being either Cameron or Ethan, because Drew hasn't mastered the tongue and voice maneuvers required to form the word "Cameron" so he simply refers to both of his brothers as "E-tah".) My standard response to Drew's jumbled tattling is to give him the go-ahead to run and tell his brothers to be nice. I never know if they have actually committed a "rough-housing foul" or not, but figure that they could always use a reminder to be cordial in their daily bashing matches.

I once got tired of hearing the complaints of who smacked who first and whether someone hit on purpose or too hard, so I removed myself from the equation with the regrettable words, "I don't want to hear it. You two deal with it yourselves." Cameron and Ethan were six and four at the time and "dealing with it themselves" was wholly beyond their capabilities, and I would surely pay for suggesting it. Five minutes later, I heard a ruckus from upstairs followed by crying, then a shrill scream, and then more crying. My reward for excellent parenting had arrived sooner than I'd anticipated. I called the boys back downstairs.

"What is going on?" I demanded in my most exasperated mother voice.

Cameron whined, "Ethan hit me in the face with a baseball bat!"

There was only a plastic bat upstairs so, despite the blood slowly running from his nose, I wasn't overly alarmed. "And so what did you do to him?" I asked.

"I threw a hanger at him."

I looked at Ethan's face, and sure enough, there was a small scratch on the surface of a bruise that was already forming under his left eye.

Tattling then became the mom-endorsed form of retaliation.

Blunt honesty is also a trademark of brotherhood. A boy can tell his brother anything and know that he cannot be demoted to the status of a mere friend or acquaintance. Brothers they will remain. I have noticed that in our house, the boys tend to listen to each other's words of advice more than they will mine or Andrew's. They have an ability to reason with one another that we, their parents, will always be left to envy.

It was a few years ago that I was in my bathroom getting ready to go shopping with my mom, (something that happens only when someone is getting married and Mom needs either a gift or a new dress to wear), and I heard the following exchange between Cameron and Ethan, who were bickering loudly over something completely ridiculous, I'm sure:

Ethan: Just relax, Dude! (He was three at the time.)

Cameron: What?!?!?

Ethan: It means, Don't be grumpy.

Cameron: (telling Ethan off for bossing him around, which lasted long enough for me to remove 8 curlers from my hair...and was finally interrupted by Ethan shouting...)

Ethan: Don't be an ASS!

Cameron immediately stopped being an ass. Problem solved. Ethan's vocabulary, however, has been undergoing constant therapy ever since.

Ethan was able to enjoy four years of being the youngest of just two children before he became a big brother himself. Drew was loved by Ethan unabashedly for almost an entire year. In his first days of life, Drew would sometimes be left at our home with my mother while Ethan and I took Cameron to school. As we were leaving one day, Ethan shouted back to my mom, "Take good care of my bebe!", and then slammed the door behind him. Proclamations that Drew was the cutest baby ever were made by Ethan on an hourly basis, and holding the tiny guy was the greatest pleasure his older brother could be given. Ethan was protective in a way that showed he truly grasped the responsibility that came with being a mentor to a younger brother.

And then Drew learned to walk, and overnight he became the biggest pain in the butt that Ethan had ever encountered. "Cute" no longer held value, and holding Drew was a bothersome chore which gave no excitement or joy whatsoever.

I have never understood it, but Ethan's favored form of entertainment is to put on a movie, grab an action figure that somehow goes along with that movie, and then skip, hop and run back and forth from one corner of the living room to another acting out the scenes in the movie and making one kind of bizarre sound effect after another; an ability which seems to be coded in the male DNA.

About two months ago, and much to Ethan's horror, Drew began to mimic Ethan. He would find an action figure of his own and follow the odd room-crossing procession right on Ethan's heels. Ethan has been very distressed by this new development in Drew's interests, and told me one day that I needed to make Drew stop following him.

"Why do you care if he follows you?", I asked. "What's the big deal?"

"He's making me feel like an idiot!", came Ethan's frantic reply.

I just laughed and told Ethan that Drew follows him and copies him because he loves him and wants to be like him. Ethan was neither flattered nor gracious about my explanation, but now stops his scene reenacting whenever Drew joins ranks. Too bad, really, because Ethan did look a bit like an idiot when he did it, and I really enjoyed watching him.

I think that I am not alone in looking forward to the day when Trent becomes a viable playmate for Drew and the older boys can occasionally be left in peace. In a house filled to the brim with active, boisterous male-type children, I fancy myself an expert in the field of brotherly love, but I know that they have more tricks up their sleeves, and I will continually be taught by them. Like it, or not.