The ping of ricocheting bullets stung my ears as I looked over to Jack, who was tucked behind cover with me, head crouched into his body to avoid the death-riddled air above. Somehow, in this moment, staring danger in the face, the words “This should be a piece of cake” sarcastically quipped from his mouth towards me. I rolled my eyes as I prepared to break from cover and take the enemy head-on with my little brother… Our backyard was a battleground, and we its warriors. Our house, which all other times of day were our cozy home, became the enemy base. The world was ours to shape and mold into whatever our child-like instincts told us would yield adventure. We had the greatest superpower of all time: imagination.

Though I am five years his senior, there was never anybody in my family of eight kids who understood the imaginative side of me quite like Jack, and vice versa. The dynamic of a large family like us is such that one develops a unique relationship with each of their siblings, and Jack is my partner in crime. My battle buddy. As I grow up, thoughts of home are frequent visitors to my already overwhelmed brain. However, it seems as though when I think of home, everything ceases to be overwhelming. Sometimes, college feels as though it is an eternal hurricane wreaking havoc on my psyche. The shock of being away from those I love hits like a thirty-foot wave invading dry land. The realization that every time I go home will be a “visit” from now on crashes like 200-year-old oak onto the roof of a double-wide. But the moments when I think of my family huddled around the kitchen table like the Waltons or staying up long after everyone else has gone to sleep to watch Star Wars theory videos with Jack, these memories are the eye of the storm. One constant among my thoughts of home is the countless times Jack and I would wield a lightsaber, or a toy gun, or even just a stick for a sword, and create our own universe in which to do whatever we pleased. Every day filled to the brim with new potential, every new morning something different, and exciting…

This morning started off on the planet Coruscant where the Jedi Council had just finished giving us our briefing. As we boarded the ship to take us off-world, packed to the brim with clone troopers ready for battle, I shot my brother a confident glance that, without any words, spoke: “we can do this”. As the ship prepared to land on the planet Geonosis, the intercom from the pilot bellowed “this is gonna be a hot landing, watch yourselves”. The landing gear of the troop carrier violently punched holes in the sand beneath it and the doors flew open, revealing the battle ahead. Lasers blanketed the air all around us as we disembarked and prepared for the fight, igniting our lightsabers with a spark and a hum. As we advanced through the battle, the evil droids fired their blasters at us, but to no avail. With calculated flips and twirls, my blue-bladed laser sword deflected the shots away from me as Jack did the same with his green blade. Then, our attention was immediately grabbed by the four-armed mechanical General Grievous, commander of the enemy droid army. In each of his four arms, he grasped a lightsaber from a Jedi he had killed previously. I looked over to Jack, who was just finishing a slice through a combatant droid with ease (they weren’t exactly the toughest of foes). “Over there!” I yelled to my brother, pointing my blade in the direction of the enemy general, who was taking on a squad of our own troops. We dashed in our nemesis’ direction, using the Force to aid in the speed of our hustle, and slicing through any mechanic beings who tried to halt us. Finally, we arrived mere yards away from Grievous. Jack raised his lightsaber in the attack position, preparing for a duel, as did I. The menacing General began his advance toward us, probing us with his taunt “run while you can, Jedi fools.” But we didn’t. Our enemy raised his all four of his saber-clad arms as he advanced, ready to attack. We raised ours, ready to engage with the villain. He readies his first swing as we readied our blocks, then suddenly a strange voice interrupted the action: “time for lunch!” mom belted through the open living room window. As her words sank in, the sandy earth of Geonosis began to shift into green grass beneath our feet, and the glow of our lightsabers turned to blue and green colored plastic toys in our hands. But the adventures were not over because after we ate our mac n’ cheese, a new one would begin.

Now we found ourselves in the middle of enemy territory, a rifle loaded my hands, and Jack carried the Russian intel along with his pistol. As we crept along the perimeter of the compound gate, we hoped that we wouldn’t be seen by any of the guards. “What do we do if they find us?” my concerned brother asked.

“Run like the wind. Now hush, cause I don’t feel like running.”

Jack rolled his eyes and closed his mouth as he brought his focus back to the mission on hand. The rendezvous point where the boat was going to pick us up was just a little less than a mile away. The only thing that stood between us and safety was an eight-foot electrified fence with sentries and an alarm that sounds every time something touches it. Great. We stumbled around to find an electrical box which should turn the fence off long enough for us to cut through. I opened the box to find a bunch of switches, but one labeled GATE POWER so I flip that one. A moment of silence passes before Jack breaks it with “well, let’s hope that worked”. Just as we began to creep back towards the gate, a sudden loud alarm burst throughout the entire camp and as an automated voice said “unauthorized gate access detected”

Jack glared at me as he rolled his eyes, saying, “Well so much for sneaking.”

“Hey, don’t give me that, how was I supposed to know it had an alarm?!”

He continued to smirk before I grabbed his shoulder and hurried the both of us toward the gate at a full sprint. Hopefully, that turned it off. As we began to run, the first guard spotted us and furiously yelled in Russian as he readied his weapon and began to fire. The bullets skipped through the dirt at our feet. We stopped running and jumped behind the cover of a building, ready to fire back. We raised our guns and started firing shots back at the enemy. The loud chaos of gunfire made it almost impossible to hear my own thoughts, but somehow, over the bellowing of gunfire, a voice shot through: “boys, time for dinner!” came my mother’s voice yet again, signaling the end of another adventure. But it was only a matter of time before the next one.

The memories I made with Jack are some of my most treasured. When I’m having a hard time living on my own, I often turn to those simpler times when growing up seemed so far away. Though I haven’t spent much time in the adult world, I have quickly realized something: adulthood is just the art of pretending not to be a child. But I choose to always keep a sizeable part of myself stuck in my backyard beside my brother. Because those were the days that everything was fun, everything was interesting, and the idea of the unknown was something to look forward to, not dread. We live in a world filled with constant anxiety, but if we can remember to look at life through the eyes of our childhood selves, we may just see a little more joy.

So thanks for being my battle buddy, Jack. It means more to me than you'll ever know.