No one remembers
which show or cartoon
gave my brother, sister, and me
the phrase:

We’ve struck puberty.

It doesn’t really matter to the story.
Just know
we heard it somewhere.

And then we ran
all around the house and yard
yelling,

We’ve struck,
PUBERTY!

hurling sticks at the earth
as if we had really found something.

We did not know
what it meant.

But my oldest brother did,
and there is the rub.

We were embarrassing
the hell out of him,
not because anyone else around
thought anything of it,
but because puberty
was exactly
what he was going through
at the time.

He lugged his basketball
at our butts
until we knocked it off.

I would not understand
his reaction
for another five years or so.