My brother, Kevin, left to go work at Cedar Point until the end of August last week. For those of you who live in holes, Cedar Point is the best amusement park in the world, located on the shores of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, about 200 miles away from little old Ashtabula, where I live. If you haven't been there, I suggest that you go there as soon as possible. But you can't ever go to any other amusement park ever again, especially none of that Six Flags shit. It will spoil you. It's so awesome that all other amusement parks seem like county fairs after you've been there. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Anyway, Kevin's almost 20 and works as a ride operator at Cedar Point. He's worked there since he graduated from high school a couple of years ago, and he loves it. I can't say as I blame him, because even though Sandusky is a pretty sleepy town, it's practically cosmopolitan compared to where I live. That is to say, there are actually things for young people to do there. Anyway, every time that Kevin leaves, I take the time to do a little retrospection on our lives together. Kevin and I have never gotten along that well. For your amusement, I've decided to put together a few highlights from our years living one room away from one another in a house that's way too small.
In the "Don't tell PETA about this one" category:
In the disfiguring marks category:
In the fun-with-board-games category:
In the fun-with-video-games category:
In the Stupidest Thing I've Ever Done category:
In the kids-are-so-cruel category:
I guess I could have had worse siblings. There've been a lot of pretty shitty times with Kevin, in which we've both done some pretty shitty things to one another, but there were also good times (like the "Africa" episode and tormenting innocent children). Whenever he leaves for Cedar Point, I always say to myself, "Good riddance," and I'm sure he does the same thing, but whenever we go to visit him there, he's always really nice to me. The first year that he worked there, we went to visit him around the time of his birthday, and when we left, he hugged me for the first time in our lives. I was 14 and he was almost 18. I often wonder what kind of relationship we're going to have when we get older. Okay, now that I'm getting all gay about it, you can go back to the main page.
When I was seven years old, Kevin was aggravating me somehow, and I was beginning the first stages of that state of uncontrollable rage into which he, and only he, can drive me. Just as our mom came into the room to break it up, I realized that the only thing that I could do would be to throw something at him, and so I picked up the nearest and largest thing and heaved it at him. Unfortunately, that near and large thing happened to be the cat. He still has the scar on his leg from where Rusty tried to right himself just before he landed on Kevin.
When I was 9, my parents went out of town for the night and my grandma was baby-sitting us. Of course, as we always did when our grandma baby-sat us, we were going buck-wild. In the course of running around the house like maniacs, I decided to run up to Kevin's room and hide from him under his bed. Well, when he came into his room, the first place he looked was under his bed. So of course, he did the only logical thing: started to swing a two-by-four under the bed to drive me out of there. He hit me in the face with it. I ran out of his room and into mine, where I flopped down on my bed with my face in my pillow to cry. When I lifted my head up, I saw that my pillow was covered with blood. Well, my grandma took me to the emergency room, where I had to have eight stitches right next to my nose. I still have the scar, which isn't very noticeable unless I smile. But that's not the best part! The thing was, we couldn't tell my parents what had really happened, since if we did, we'd both be grounded. So we - my grandma, Kevin, and I - contrived this huge tale about how we'd been playing Yahtzee and I'd gotten mad and gone upstairs to jump on Kevin's bed, where I'd fallen onto the corner of his nightstand. Miraculously, they bought it. I told them the real story about three years later.
When I was six years old, I had this set of Childcraft encyclopedias that I liked to read. In the set, there were books on things like literature, earth science, and human anatomy. I had just been reading the one on human anatomy on the day of the infamous Scrabble game. Kevin and I were in his room, playing Scrabble. He made the word "pig." Well, I decided to show off my newfound knowledge of human anatomy and make "pig" into "epiglottis," which is the flap that goes over your trachea and esophagus to make sure that you don't breathe your food or swallow your air. It's also the thing that is having muscle spasms when you have hiccups, which I happen to have as I'm writing this. Amazing. Anyway, Kevin insisted that it wasn't a word. I insisted that it was. Wasn't. Was. Wasn't! Wa - OOOF! He punched me as hard as he could in the stomach. Of course, I ran to my mom and cried. Ah, to be six again...
I think I was 8 when International Street Fighter was out. Wait, maybe it wasn't called that. In any case, it was the one where the two guys weren't fighting on the street. They fought with selected guys from other countries one-on-one Mortal Kombat-style. Strangely, video games were one of the only things over which Kevin and I could bond. Well, it went either way. Either he'd be yelling at me because I couldn't do it, or because I was doing "cheap" things like just punching and punching in fighting games since I didn't know any codes, or because I was asking too many questions, or we'd get along smashingly. This was one of the latter times. Anyway, one of the things over which we bonded while playing was making fun of our opponents. It was usually just things like how the other guy was such a big fag, how he probably had sex with that bird on his shoulder, what a dork he was, etc. Well, there was this one big black guy from Africa on International Street Fighter or whatever it was who had some stupid African name. Well, we made fun of him, and even made his own incredibly politically incorrect theme song based on Toto's "Africa." I'd write the lyrics here, but there might be some people who'd be offended by it, and for good reason, for once. We laughed forever over that song. The funny part about it is that every time I hear the song "Africa," it reminds me of that day and it makes me happy. That's why it's one of my favorite songs. That's the only song on this earth that no matter how unbelievably shitty I'm feeling, I get happy when I hear it, because that was a really fun day with Kevin.
Rewind to about this time last year. I was so bored with my life. Every day was exactly the same, with no variation or excitement whatsoever. So I decided to try weed again for the first time in a couple of years. I bought a twenty-sack from a close friend, who'd gotten it from her boyfriend. I said to her, "You know, this is really small; did he rip me off?" She said, "Look at it! It's so green that it's practically flourescent!" I was like, "Um, okay." I had no idea that the color had anything to do with its potency. So I went home that night and smoked four bowls to my head. Four large bowls. As a result, I freaked out. Totally. Completely. I was convinced that it had been laced with something and that I was going to die if I fell asleep. The only thing that I could think of to do was to ask Kevin what to do. I went into Kevin's room and I said, "Kevin, have you ever smoked weed that was laced with something?" He said, "Probably; why?" I said, "Because I think I just did. What should I do?" He said, "I think you should tell Mom." My mom's a phlebotomist with limited medical knowledge who is the most anti-drug person on earth. But it sounded like a great idea at the time! As a result, my parents basically ripped me a new asshole. But this all turned out to be a good thing, because as a result of the many punishments that I received, events were altered that would have made my life even more boring and crappy now.
When I was five, Kevin was a Cub Scout, and my parents were Pack Leaders. As a result, my mom was friends with a lot of other Cub Scout moms who would come over a lot. Her friend Ramona had a son named Nicholas who was the biggest, queerest mama's boy ever. Nicholas was 9, one year older than Kevin was. Of course, when Ramona came over, she brought Nicholas to play with us. When I say "play with us," that means that we'd torment Nicholas and he'd cry. I loved this because instead of the usual procedure of Kevin and his friends tormenting me, I got to be on the other end for once. So this one time, Ramona and Nicholas came over and Kevin and I were hatching schemes. What we decided to do was this: I'd distract Nicholas while Kevin got up in the tree behind our garage with a bucket of water. When Kevin gave me the signal, I'd lead Nicholas behind the garage, position him just so, and Kevin would pour the water on his head. It went off without a hitch. Kevin even dropped the bucket on Nicholas's head. Of course, he cried and we got in trouble, but it was worth it. Never has anything that we tried just because we saw it on TV and it was funny worked so well.