The kid’s nose nearly dusted the brownie as he calculated to the millimeter where to place the plastic knife. His brother leaned in so closely to supervise that if he had been old enough to grow one, the brownie knife could have simultaneously trimmed his beard while dividing the brownie.

This is what it’s like when Mom says you can have a treat as long as you share half with your sibling. No engineer has ever measured dimensions with the same precision as a sibling forced to go halfsies.

As I watched the two boys divide the brownie, the years melted away like half a bowl of ice cream as I remembered these delicate negotiations from my own childhood.

It was bad enough when Mom made me split a treat with Timmy, but to think that my brother might get to savor a crumb more of a cookie than I did was, in the technical terms of the day, no fair!

It was me who put in all the work of wearing down Mom with insistent begging and whining, so it should be me who earned at least two-thirds of the treat. Besides, I was older and bigger. My body required more cookie to survive than what my scrawny kid brother needed.

Mom never understood fair play. Maybe it was because she was a girl. She said it was because she had it up to here (whatever that meant) with all the bratty behavior and there was about to be no cookie at all.

I sulked away with my extremely precise half of the cookie. But let me tell you, if I ever found out who the mysterious brat was who kept driving Mom up the wall (whatever that meant, too), I’d give them a full piece of my mind. I should have had a whole cookie, not a lousy half.

I don’t know why but Mom often was unreasonable, bordering on just plain mean.

Pop was a rare treat. But one day, we discovered a bottle of root beer in the refrigerator. After 15 minutes or so of intense negotiations, Mom finally said I could drink it, but I had to share it with Timmy (even though he hadn’t contributed nearly as much to the pleadings and beseeching as I did).

Mom pulled two mugs out of the cupboard, poured the root beer, and slid a glass to me.

“Hey, no fair! Timmy got more than I did!” I pointed out calmly.

“Hmm. I believe you’re right. There’s a smidge more in his glass. Let me fix that.” Mom took a sip from Timmy’s mug.

“No fair! Now Burton has more!”

It was then that I suspected that my brother might be the brat Mom referred to earlier.

“Oops,” Mom said. “I’ll fix that.”

“That wasn’t a sip. That was a gulp.” I might have raised my voice a tiny bit. “A BIG gulp.”

“Oh, dear.” Mom wiped her lips. “Let me fix that.”

Mom never did get it right. She drained both mugs of root beer without ever fixing it. Mom didn’t play fair.

“Say, would you boys like to share the last piece of chocolate cake? Just let me cut it in half…”

“I can do it.” I reached for the table knife. “Timmy, go get Dad’s tape measure.”

My nose nearly dusted the frosting as I calculated to the millimeter where to place the knife. Timmy leaned in so closely to supervise that if he had been old enough to grow one, I could have simultaneously trimmed his beard while dividing the cake.

We bolted from the kitchen without bothering to compare our halves of the cake. We feared that if we found a flaw, Mom would offer to fix it. Obviously, she wasn’t very smart about stuff like that.

Split time with Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.