My wife and I were cleaning the final remnants of the fall leaves recently. As we returned to dispose of more of the many piles of leaves, I handed her the rake.

A thought crossed my mind: When we were younger, did my brother and I ever hand things to each other?

There was a lot of tossing between us. Books, fruit, clothes, lots of clothes. If you could pick it up with one hand, then it was a reason to toss it. Pets? I don't think so, although years later my brother threw a dog over a house.

We were a bit rough-and-tumble growing up, and we always seemed to have some patch on the knees or elbows of our clothing.

At the dinner table, my mother always made it clear to "PASS the food" by handing the plate to the next person. I recall some dinner rolls being tossed from one side to the other. Sometimes the husk from an ear of corn, as I held open the trash bag. Apple cores were always thrown as were left-over hamburger buns and beets.

Outside, everything was thrown between us. Newspaper bags, loaves of bread while unloading groceries and plenty of insults. One threw and the other caught. Misses were cause for ridicule.

One time in church, some altar boys didn't show up, so the priest asked us to serve the Mass. My brother, who was beginning to get old enough to not want to do that, threw my cassock -- still on the hanger -- across three pews to me. I caught it. You don't want to fumble in church. Our mom was horrified and gave us both quite a stern look and tongue-lashing later.

When we went into the Air Force, we didn't throw too many things. A tube of toothpaste or a T-shirt once in a while. And then we went our separate ways a couple of months later.

When I think about my own household, it's ironic -- or maybe it's fitting -- that one of the first things I did was teach my daughter how to catch. She's a heck of a good catch ... better than many of her boy classmates. She's a chip off the old block.

 
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