I have a lot of best friends, people I’ve collected over the years and can’t live without. I’m still BFFs with my childhood besties, and my college friends are my nearest and dearest. However, it’s my little brother, Dylan, who is my true best friend, and we go way back … all the way back to the year he was born. We’ve been tight for almost 26 years!

It’s not super-common for a brother-and-sister duo to be as close as we are, and that’s why I love it.

1. You’ve been BFFs your whole life. That’s something to celebrate nearly every day.

2. You can complain about how crazy your parents are being and the other person will totally understand.

3. Your friends are always like, “You know, your brother is really cute!” and he’s always had crushes on them.

4. When you were younger, having a tagalong little brother was kind of annoying, but now you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

5. You find yourself wondering which side your brother will stand on at your eventual wedding. Can he be your Man of Honor?

6. Your brother is always your first choice when something in your apartment needs fixing. In my experience, most of my dude friends are softboys (sorry, guys) who can’t fix anything, though they think they can. Luckily, I have a brother on-call to help.

7. People think it’s kind of weird at first. Brothers and sisters aren’t supposed to be BFFs!

8. Your brother becomes a part of your social circle. My brother was one of the “cool kids” right away in high school because he had me to pave the way.

9. Your parents constantly compare you. This can be great, and it can be totally annoying.

10. You take care of each other.

11. His girlfriends have to pass the Big Sister Test before he can totally commit to them. If you don’t like her, it’s probably not gonna work out.

12. You can squabble and snap at each other and get over it in approximately 15 minutes. You’ve had practice.

13. No one else can play the “Remember when” game like you guys can. Your memories go basically back to birth, so …

14. Someone else knows all your stories about your crazy family, and probably has his own edits to your favorite party tales.

15. You always have a ride home for the holidays, and you can make him drive so you can text and play the songs you want.

16. You understand each other’s little quirks. After all, it’s genetic, right?

17. When you were little, he was always the sidekick to whichever fairytale character you were pretending to be that day. If that meant he had to be a dog or a fish, so be it.

18. Sure, you had fights as kids, but they were not nearly as bad as some of the brawls you witnessed between your friends and their siblings.

19. Your brother has the spare key to your apartment and your car, not your best friend or boyfriend.

20. You’re the one he calls when he needs to borrow money, edit a resume or is hurting post-breakup.

21. You’re each other’s built-in emergency contact, ride to the airport and “person I’ll call if I need to get bailed out of jail.”

22. A brotherly BFF means that you’ll always have a friend to call you out when you’re being impossibly bitchy or annoying. After all, he doesn’t have to be afraid of how you’ll react because he already knows.

23. He may or may not have transferred colleges to be closer to you.

24. Sometimes, you just wanna hang out together and eat the “gross” foods you grew up loving that no one else understands and appreciates, like Spam.

25. Friends may come and go, but your bro is family, and family is forever.