They Called Me a Joke — Then My Brother’s Officer Recognised My Rank The living room was loud enough to make the picture frames vibrate—champagne, cheap applause, my father’s voice booming as if volume could turn fiction into fact. All of it for my brother, the family’s golden boy, propped up in the center of the room like a store-window hero. When Dad hauled him toward an old friend—“This is Brandon, my soldier”—his eyes slid to me and the joke landed, practiced and effortless. “And this,” he s