Sage advice from the Chicago Transit Authority.

My older brother and his wife recently announced that they are pregnant with their first child, due in December. A couple weeks later my sister and I discussed our brother's potential parenting skills and wondered if he would actually be nice to his own child. Is this criticism? Skepticism? Rheumatism? No. Please refer to the following stories.

Dave is the brother that threw a rock at me from thirty feet away because I walked away from a game of one-on-one. He hit me in the neck and I whipped around and screamed "YOU HIT ME IN THE NECK!" He bounced the ball a couple times and cooly replied, "I was aiming for your face." He was probably fourteen at the time, but it was indicator that Dave followed, and continues to follow, a mantra: you only hurt the ones you love.

My family will vouch for this. When Dave's preschool teacher raved about a polite and well-behaved little boy in her class, Mom squinted her eyes and replied "my David?" When Sarah Lindgren, the friendly blond in our church youth group, invited freshman Dave to junior prom because he was "so sweet," my sister Liz and I exchanged looks of confusion and doubt. And when he got married to a beautiful, soft spoken woman named Jess, our family discussed how perhaps Jess would be able to "level Dave out," just like the rest of our spouses seemed to do for us and our tempers.

Dave just shows his love in slightly confusing spurts. When he started referring to my thirteen-year-old knees as grapefruits and different varieties of summer melons, I'm sure he meant "wow, those muscular legs of yours will take you far, little sister!" And when he threw that rock at my face, he was probably trying to teach me a lesson about walking away from a challenge or underestimating myself. He actually turned me into a pretty good basketball player by forcing me to practice jump shots while holding a large manure shovel inches behind my ankles so I would stop hopping backwards. He also ran my first half marathon with me, and tried really hard to teach his niece Leah to say "corn" only a few months before she learned to speak: "SAY IT, say cooornnnn. Corn. CORN. Say cooooorrrrrn." His face showed not only the confidence in his own coaching techniques, but also in Leah's capable baby brain. Leah's face displayed a look of desperation shared by everyone else at the dinner table as we watched her gesture, stretch, and whimper while Dave held the small cob in front of her like a carrot on a stick. Ah, family times.

David likes to push buttons, and he learned it from my dad. Their favorite thing to do is push each other to the breaking point and see who snaps first (usually it's Dad, depending on home turf and time of day). So when Dave and Jess announced they were having a boy, I pictured the same relationship unfolding and the same button pushing exchange to grow and mature between my brother Dave and his oldest son.

But I saw this sign at my local train stop, and remembered that Dave not only learned to push buttons and shoot a gun from Dad, he also turned into a serious snuggler and huggler. He is a purveyor, some would say, of the snugs 'n cuds. In college he routinely invited friends to spoon with him on the couch of his apartment, and last fall in Cape Cod he and Jess opted to share a twin bed for three nights rather than sleep apart. I know he will be a loving father to this new baby, and I can't wait to see the new family together at Christmas. So Dave, from the Chicago Transit Authority, to me, to you, here is a life lesson about riding on escalators and rearing children: