You know that something is wrong when your brother says he’s planning to destroy the world with a pocket full of ice chunks.

“Ice chunks?” you exclaim, or rather, I did. “What are we going to do with a pocket full of ice chunks?”

“We’ll dump them on the floor of the supermarket,” he answered gravely. “People will trip over them and fall. They’ll get hurt. Some might die. Then they’ll sue the supermarket. There will be a huge war. All the nukes will go off and the entire world will be destroyed.”

“Dusty,” I said. His name wasn’t really Dusty, of course, that’s just what I called him because his real name, Dustin, was too hard for me to use on an everyday basis. I put my hands on his shoulders and stared intently into his deep gray eyes. “No one goes to war over ice chunks in a supermarket,” I told him solemnly.

“They say that wars get started over the stupidest thing,” he replied. “That was the stupidest thing I could come up with.”

For the first time I doubted my dear brother’s intelligence. He wasn’t nearly stupid enough to be an average person.

“That was the stupidest thing you could come up with?” I cried. “I can think of lots of things stupider then that!”

“Like?” He prompted.

“Like… like…” I spluttered. “I’m not telling you! I don’t want you to destroy the world. I like the world!”