This is my pesky brother Chad. He was a rotten kid. No, really. I can say that too cause I’m his poor younger sister. Don’t come to his defense, he grew out of it, but there was a time there when he was rotten.
He did a lot of older brother things to me when we were kids. One time he cut my hair and told my mom a ghost did it. He got away with it and I had to go round town with hair chopped up like a jack-o-lantern’s mouth.
One time he positioned me at the end of the driveway while he stood at the top on his bike. He told me to stand still if I knew what was good for me. But, after the hair cutting incident I knew what was good for me was to get the heck out of his way so I took a step to the right as he came careening at me with his bike. Anyway, apparently his plan was to swerve to his left at the last minute, thusly, sparing my marshmallow white visage and all my 3-year old baby teeth. Cept, I was three and didn’t know about that tricky ending. I took his cherry red Schwinn to the mouth. I doubt he got in trouble. There was no justice in my home when I was wee.
One lesson I learned quickly was to stay away from Chad while he was playing Axis and Allies with his nerd friends cause, for sure, I’d lose an arm. You’d be surprised about nerdy boys, they’re not the wimps that the movies make ‘em out to be.
I also learned the hard way that she who interrupts Chad half-way through his Star Trek movie watching marathon, especially if Wrath of Khan is playing, shall not have a mouthful of teeth for much longer. Talk about knuckle sandwich.
One time, retaliation on my part involved me throwing a blender at my brother. I didn’t really think that one through, I guess. I got in trouble. My brother got off Scott free. He never got in any trouble. He was the good one. My parents thought he had all the brains between us kids and implored me to leave him alone so that he could use his brain in peace. They were a little smidgey wrong though, cause I got some of them brains too.
He wasn’t so bad all the time, though. One time I was hopping over the frozen waves on Lake Michigan in early January. I was just a little kid not using the ¼-brain that got passed down to me (remember, my brother got most of the rest). I fell into a crevice between the waves and got lodged in the ice. My moon boots were just feet above the icy, frigid water that was at the bottom of the crevice. Every time I screamed or tried to pull myself out I ended up just sliding a little bit further into the crevice. Fortunately, my big brother, who loved Kling-Ons more than me, came round at the right time. Grabbing me by my wrists, he heaved me back up onto the solid ice where I bear hugged his ankles for sparing my lowly life. Then he whomped me on my skull for being dumb. That’s okay, that boy saved my life.
Now he’s grown up a bit. He’s not so crazy about Star Trek, or Star Wars, or NASA. Turns out, he was even smarter than everyone first thought he was. Which, of course, I knew. I got smarter, too, and learned to stay away from him until he went to college where he took a class about little sisters not being so bad. He graduated from undergrad. Then he went to NYC where he lived in Harlem and went to graduate school. He’s so smart. He just got nicer and nicer, too. Then he went off to San Diego where he got his PhD. Eventually, he ended up in DC. Now, he’s married and has a super-smart little boy. He works at this one academic place that you probably have heard of but I’ll leave you guessing. He teaches people all about the science of politics. He’s not an engineer or a mathematician like everyone said he would be. He’s a teacher! A good one. He could tell you all about Australia and how it came to be. If you wanted to know what the heck happened to Yugoslavia, or whatever it’s called these days, he’d be someone to ask. He’s got all sorts of data about what exactly is the trouble with Tribbles and that doesn't even have anything to do with his dissertation or that big old book he just got published. On top of that, he knows the names of all the space crafts and what type of paneling they’re using these days.
He’s an environmentalist. He is one of the early Prius owners; he and his super-genius wife have one car between them. They walk to their grocery store, Whole Foods, of course. They take public transit when they can’t walk. A solar powered light illuminated their walk-way at night. A vegetarian! He takes his son to France so that Milo can learn French. And talk about parenting, he’s probably one of the best papas around. He respects children. Plus, he’s a feminist (he probably doesn’t even lock his wife in the basement if she talks to him during a viewing of Wrath of Khan). He’s so darn modest that he’ll deny most of everything good about himself.
Anyway, today is the day that my brother was born 35 years ago. Happy birthday!
He did a lot of older brother things to me when we were kids. One time he cut my hair and told my mom a ghost did it. He got away with it and I had to go round town with hair chopped up like a jack-o-lantern’s mouth.
One time he positioned me at the end of the driveway while he stood at the top on his bike. He told me to stand still if I knew what was good for me. But, after the hair cutting incident I knew what was good for me was to get the heck out of his way so I took a step to the right as he came careening at me with his bike. Anyway, apparently his plan was to swerve to his left at the last minute, thusly, sparing my marshmallow white visage and all my 3-year old baby teeth. Cept, I was three and didn’t know about that tricky ending. I took his cherry red Schwinn to the mouth. I doubt he got in trouble. There was no justice in my home when I was wee.
One lesson I learned quickly was to stay away from Chad while he was playing Axis and Allies with his nerd friends cause, for sure, I’d lose an arm. You’d be surprised about nerdy boys, they’re not the wimps that the movies make ‘em out to be.
I also learned the hard way that she who interrupts Chad half-way through his Star Trek movie watching marathon, especially if Wrath of Khan is playing, shall not have a mouthful of teeth for much longer. Talk about knuckle sandwich.
One time, retaliation on my part involved me throwing a blender at my brother. I didn’t really think that one through, I guess. I got in trouble. My brother got off Scott free. He never got in any trouble. He was the good one. My parents thought he had all the brains between us kids and implored me to leave him alone so that he could use his brain in peace. They were a little smidgey wrong though, cause I got some of them brains too.
He wasn’t so bad all the time, though. One time I was hopping over the frozen waves on Lake Michigan in early January. I was just a little kid not using the ¼-brain that got passed down to me (remember, my brother got most of the rest). I fell into a crevice between the waves and got lodged in the ice. My moon boots were just feet above the icy, frigid water that was at the bottom of the crevice. Every time I screamed or tried to pull myself out I ended up just sliding a little bit further into the crevice. Fortunately, my big brother, who loved Kling-Ons more than me, came round at the right time. Grabbing me by my wrists, he heaved me back up onto the solid ice where I bear hugged his ankles for sparing my lowly life. Then he whomped me on my skull for being dumb. That’s okay, that boy saved my life.
Now he’s grown up a bit. He’s not so crazy about Star Trek, or Star Wars, or NASA. Turns out, he was even smarter than everyone first thought he was. Which, of course, I knew. I got smarter, too, and learned to stay away from him until he went to college where he took a class about little sisters not being so bad. He graduated from undergrad. Then he went to NYC where he lived in Harlem and went to graduate school. He’s so smart. He just got nicer and nicer, too. Then he went off to San Diego where he got his PhD. Eventually, he ended up in DC. Now, he’s married and has a super-smart little boy. He works at this one academic place that you probably have heard of but I’ll leave you guessing. He teaches people all about the science of politics. He’s not an engineer or a mathematician like everyone said he would be. He’s a teacher! A good one. He could tell you all about Australia and how it came to be. If you wanted to know what the heck happened to Yugoslavia, or whatever it’s called these days, he’d be someone to ask. He’s got all sorts of data about what exactly is the trouble with Tribbles and that doesn't even have anything to do with his dissertation or that big old book he just got published. On top of that, he knows the names of all the space crafts and what type of paneling they’re using these days.
He’s an environmentalist. He is one of the early Prius owners; he and his super-genius wife have one car between them. They walk to their grocery store, Whole Foods, of course. They take public transit when they can’t walk. A solar powered light illuminated their walk-way at night. A vegetarian! He takes his son to France so that Milo can learn French. And talk about parenting, he’s probably one of the best papas around. He respects children. Plus, he’s a feminist (he probably doesn’t even lock his wife in the basement if she talks to him during a viewing of Wrath of Khan). He’s so darn modest that he’ll deny most of everything good about himself.
Anyway, today is the day that my brother was born 35 years ago. Happy birthday!
3 comments:
Hey, he's from Janesville, he couldn't have been all THAT bad as a kid, right?
Uh, right. So anyway, did you get the t-shirt I sent of Jesus beating up a dinosaur?
He's modest?
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