just one more....

i didn't like my brother before he was even born. i demonstrated this when my mother was on her back in bed 9 months pregnant. she asked me to bring her a large encyclopedia, which i delivered and dropped unceremoniously on her stomach. i was 12. i wasn't an evil child, honest. but i didn't like the idea of that thing coming into our lives. i was by then the oldest of 4 children so i felt i'd tolerated enough already. my mother had divorced and re-married and i suppose my step-father wanted one child that was all his. it seemed the 4 of us weren't enough. my 'accidental' drop didn't stop the inevitable and he was born anyway. to tell you the truth, i didn't do it with actual murder in my heart, it was more an act of resentment than anything. here, brat, take that. my sisters thought the little baby was so cute but i don't remember wanting much to do with it.

you couldn't ignore that one for long, though. he was, i am convinced, the most high maintenance child in history, and still is. at least we moved to a place where we had horses and all kinds of farm animals not long after he was born. i could escape him, there was plenty to do in the barn. let my sisters play babysitter, i didn't want any part of it. he demanded everyone's complete and utter attention at all times, which bored and irritated me. i stewed on ways to get him back. as i write this, i am reminded of the lyrics to 'Up All Night' by the Talking Heads:

"sister, sister, he's just a plaything.
i wanna make him stay up all night."

and even to this day when i hear the White Stripes sing 'The Hardest Button to Button' i think of my little brother:

"He had toothache
He started crying
It sounded like an earthquake
It didn't last long
Because I stopped it
I grabbed a rag doll
And stuck some little pins in it"

he thrived and i found tolerating him much more of a challenge than the other 3 had been. one summer one of my sisters went away with a friend for the entire summer and he decided that he had to carry every single one of his toys at all times. i believe there were about 12, from dolls to a push-toy i called the poppity-corn-popper because of the way balls would bounce in a plastic bubble as its wheels turned. picking him up became no easy task and of course there was no refusing his will. you either did it or suffered the consequences. when my sister returned home he dropped all of the toys. then he went through his Hat Phase, which meant that he had to go through and pick the special hat he absolutely needed to wear and nothing, nothing could happen until this hat was chosen and placed upon his precious head. one of the hats was at least amusing - a yellow hard-hat with a red spinning siren/light on top. but a child with a siren and spinning red light on his head is only amusing for so long. especially in public.

and then of course there was the phase when he would open no door with his bare hands and had to use his elbows. since elbows do not come complete with opposing thumbs this little task was not easily achieved. i didn't know whether to smack him or laugh at him. i wasn't allowed to smack him, so laugh it was.

even though i couldn't smack him i found there were other ways to torture him as payback for the way i considered he tortured all of us. these torture sessions usually occurred when my parents weren't home. one night he sat at the dining room table by the big sliding glass doors, coloring with my sister or something. so i snuck outside with a white sheet over myself and suddenly leapt at the window, flailing and moaning. i do believe he peed his pants. another evening, same setting, i had him put on the giant headphones attached to the stereo cabinet. there was a song by Pink Floyd i wanted him to hear called 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene". the song's name gives you a pretty good idea of what one might expect. the song rose up slowly with a slow, persistent, and monotonous beat. he looked at me in boredom after a minute of this, trying to remove the headphones, but i insisted he keep them on. the good part was coming. one of the Floyd people started whispering in his ears and his eyes widened. i could tell he was getting wary.
careful, careful with that axe, eugene

then the blood-curdling screams. i made sure to wrench the sound to full volume for the screaming part. he leapt out of the chair, ripping the headphones off and shrieking.

"but i thought you'd like it. it has your name in it, eugene."

and i laughed and laughed.

i can't remember what it was he did the next time i decided he required torture. was it when he rode his skateboard into the base of the staircase and punched a hole in the wood? my parents were out, so naturally i was sure i'd get the blame for not watching what the brat did. or was it the time he tied a rope from the living room door handles to the shelf on the wall where my father's prized glass-domed clock resided ... then closed the door. i'd run to answer the ringing phone when i heard the horrible sound of glass shattering. either one of them will do. i told him that when mom & pop got home and saw what he'd done they would give his precious tricycle away to brian brown up the street. oh yes, absolutely. he wailed in abject misery.

that'll teach you, you little shit.

of course they didn't take away his tricycle. he never seemed to have to suffer much for his misdeeds, even years later. when i drove a $300 1968 Plymouth Satellite, he had a $300 three-wheeler ATV. he shot my sister's friend's car window out with a bee-bee gun and suffered little consequence other than the pain of a bee-bee imbedded in the palm of his hand later that day when he stuck his hand out as his friend shot. i thought that was pretty good payback.

odd thing, though. i was his 'favorite sister'. the crazy, fun one. after all, when he decided to run away from home when he was about 7 i offered to help him. packed all 2 runaways would need for a night in the woods and drove my Pinto up onto Horse Mountain by the reservoir. i was counting on him having second thoughts when we stopped in the moonless woods and scuffed through dried leaves. a 7 year old who has never spent a moment outside the comfort of 6 other people wasn't liable to find a lot of comfort with his questionable sister, however fun, with nothing between him and the night woods' danger but a sleeping bag.

despite his cherub face and head of golden banana curls, it was impossible not to continue resenting him, though. sort of a love-hate thing. where i, as first born, had to train my parents on what it was like to raise a teenager, he got away with murder years later when he reached his teens and the golden angel turned into a dark devil. by then my parents were weary of doing battle with the little monster. i was a virgin as long as i lived in their house, i never smoked a cigarette, a joint, or even tried a beer. he came home with pierced ears. he came home tattooed. he smoked pot and drank beer and painted his room with hellish black spray-paint. he bought more and more snakes and lizards and spiders. mysterious, because i don't recall him having a job. he was consistently in trouble in school for doing things like, say, spraying "Fart Spray" through the halls. he had loud sex with his girlfriend overhead while we ate dinner downstairs. and he's gone on to do so much more.

they just had to have one more kid, didn't they?

see....i had the right idea with the encyclopedia. i knew it.