A deviation from the topic at hand……….

Today I feel like poo. Not literally – just emotionally.

Yesterday I got the not-so-subtle brush off from my nephew’s mother. I asked for an address to send his birthday present to (because I knew they had moved and I hadn’t gotten the new address). She replied with her father’s address. REALLY????>

Now I realize that my brother is a certified ass and my nephew really doesn’t want much to do with him. I also realize that my mother is pretty cold and my nephew really doesn’t want anything to do with her.

HOWEVER, I have gone out of my way to be nice, accommodating and understanding when it comes to this situation.

The Situation – My family (including my brother) hadn’t actually met my nephew until a couple years ago. Let’s just say that Baby Mama #2 (yep #2) did something especially smart and kicked my brother out of her life when she got preggers. However, none of the rest of us had ever met her, so she had no idea that the rest of us weren’t completely certifiable. Hence, no meeting of the nephew until my niece (from Baby Mama #1) decided she wanted to meet her brother. That led to the rest of us meeting him and Baby Mama #2. So nephew was 8 ½ when we finally met him.

I thought (that’s what I get for thinking) that Baby Mama #2 and I actually got along. We talked about my brother and his issues. She said that I understood my brother better than she thought. I bought her boys (yep she’s got another Baby Daddy) both winter stuff (boots, gloves, snow pants, coats, etc,.) and my nephew school clothes and shoes. – Now, I know that sounds like I was trying to buy my way in, but I had been buying that type of stuff for my niece since she was born, so I figured I could do it for my nephew too.

So 2 ½ years later, here we are.

What irks me the most is that I actually doubt that my nephew doesn’t want to see any of us. He’s just reflecting his mother’s feelings back to her. (OOPS! Psychology degree rearing it’s ugly head!!!)

Fast Forward to the Past

I could write lots and lots of stuff about my brother.

There’s the time that he set some dried grass on fire during a drought.

How about the time he stuck a candy coated chocolate up his nose after returning from trick or treating?

Or maybe the time he found one of my dad’s adult themed magazines and took it on the school bus?

There’s also all kinds of things that are too disturbing to mention. So, I won’t. But feel free to write and tell me which tale you’d like for me to tell. 

But nothing gets really interesting until we moved from one state to another - when the family is all back together and then it all falls apart.

My brother was about 10 when we moved from one state to another. We moved because of my father’s job. The plant in our town had been shut down and he was forced to move to another one. It took us about a year and a half to be able to sell the house and join him.

For the first time in our lives we lived in a real neighborhood. We didn’t live SO far out that we couldn’t get cable and there were lots of kids nearby to play with.

So, how does my brother try to make friends the first day that we’re there??? He tells the other boys in the neighborhood that I’m in the shower and they try to climb up on the roof of the garage to see in the bathroom window. Awesome.

Neither my brother nor I wanted to move. We begged not to. And after many years, I wonder how our lives would have been different if we had stayed. Because what happens in the next few years changes so many things about who we are.

You know how when you look back in retrospect you’re always like, “How did I not SEE that when it was right in front of my face?” That’s how I feel about my parent’s marriage. You notice when we first move to the new state that they seem close, but over time things change in such small increments that you don’t notice it at the time. Such is the case of my parent’s marriage.

Right before my senior year of high school they announce that they’re getting divorced. And of course, being a teenager, I can only think about me. It’s not that I didn’t care about what the rest of my family was going through, I was just too busy dealing with my own stuff to even begin to deal with theirs.

At first it sucks. My dad moves out during a weekend that my mom takes us to see family. So, now it’s kind of like before only weirder.

Then it really sucks because my brother starts acting out – a LOT. For example, (and this is my mother’s last straw) one morning I was getting ready for school. We only had one full bathroom and I was curling my hair. My brother needed in to brush his teeth. I told him to come in and I would slide over and continue curling my hair. He came in to brush his teeth and before I know it, he puts toothpaste in my hair. Being a teenage girl, I am EXTREMELY upset and start crying and tell my mother what happened. To which, she starts yelling saying that she can no longer take his attitude/outbursts/etc. Later, after school, my father came to get my brother to take him to live with him in the apartment. How this sucked for me is that I had to go pick him up for school every morning because the apartment was out of district. So, we all kind of got punished here.

My brother gets even worse at school (I had no idea that was even possible). But now instead of just sucking at school he starts skipping class and getting in trouble to the point where he gets suspended and eventually expelled. I’m pretty sure that was not a proud moment for my parents. My brother would never return to high school.

At this point my mom and I have moved out of the house and my father is back in the house. Since my mother has moved me out of district, I can’t ride the bus. I can still attend the same school because of something called “Senior Rights”, but I need to make my own way there. So, I get the little truck that my dad had been driving. Since he was going through some midlife crisis and had bought a sports car, then I got to drive the truck. This was all great and fine until one day when I was leaving school.

My brother was sitting in the truck. I wasn’t planning on driving him anywhere, so I asked what he was doing. He said that I was driving him home. I said no. I told him to go and get on the bus to take him home. He refused, so I told him that I was driving to where I lived and then he could call dad to come and get him because I wasn’t driving him home.

When we got to the apartment I went upstairs to my room. When I came downstairs my brother told me that he had called our dad and told him that I didn’t want to bring him home because I didn’t want to see him. (LIE!) I panicked and went upstairs and called my mother at work. I told her what was happening. While I was on the phone with my mother, my father showed up and took the truck away. I never got the truck back. From then on I had to get rides from people to bring me home every day.

My brother is devious. It’s taken me quite a while to figure out how to deal with him and anticipate his end game.

Please feel free to write in to say which tale you’d like for me to tell next:

How about when he punched my best friend in the jaw and then her jaw locked – minutes before her sister was showing up to take her home?

Trapped me and the neighbor in the half bath downstairs bathroom because he was chasing us around with a belt?

Let someone who was stalking me into the house while I was asleep?

All interesting tales……I’m sure that I’ll get around to all of them eventually.

Good Girls Don’t Get Candy

You’ve seen them. Everyone has seen them - The kid nagging, whining and maybe even screaming because they want that one special thing in the checkout line.

We’ve all rolled our eyes and wondered what kind of parenting this kid is getting, because he is acting a fool in public. Heck – I’ve even thought about going up to the kid and yelling at him to “Knock it off!” or say “THAT is ENOUGH!” However, I still needed to continue to shop and not be escorted out by the security guard for yelling at a child who is not mine. (On a personal note – I wonder if actually having a stranger come up to the kid would be a useful way to get the kid to be quiet? If it scares them enough, the parent could always pull out the “You better behave before someone scary comes and yells at you” card. Just sayin’…. )

My brother was THAT kid. He was the one constantly nagging and whining about some piece of candy, toy or whatever had struck his fancy that day.

My mom hated it. You could openly tell that she hesitated taking us places because she was afraid that she would have to deal with him. I mean, sure, she’d start out strong with a very stern “No”. But inevitably my brother would wear her down because he was escalating his behavior and it was becoming quite embarrassing for her. And nothing smelled of victory to my brother quite like hearing my mom say “Fine. Just be quiet!” in as hushed of a tone as she could muster. And once he had established that it took X amount of complaining for Y period of time to get Z, then he couldn’t be stopped.

I watched my brother pull that routine more times than I can count. But for the life of me, I can’t remember ever having such a fit. Now, I’m not professing to be some sort of angel here. I’m sure there were times when I cried about not getting something that I wanted. But I am supremely confident that I never rose to the level of ridiculousness that my brother did.

Fast forward 20+ years – My brother still lives with my mother (for reasons that will be discussed at length later). She provides food, shelter, car, money and as much enabling as she can for him. Has this routine of whining and complaining really evolved and continued on for this long of a period of time?? You betcha!!!

All my brother has to do is pull out his monologue on how hard he has it, how he’s been wronged by so many people, how nothing works out the way it should (ok – that’s how HE thinks it should) and how if only she would ____________________ , then he could get it together. He has this particular routine, and variations of it, ready to lay on as thick as possible for whatever cause he has on tap.

And lately, I have begun to think to myself that I should adopt a similar extreme “woe-is-me” story for my mom and I could probably get more out of her. However, just the thought of it makes me feel dirty. I know that it’s wrong to do that. And part of me thinks that he knows it too, but that she’s just such as easy mark…..so, why not? (Does anyone else smell no inheritance because of this? – Shit! She’ll be lucky to have any money to retire at the rate it’s going.)

At this point in my tale, I think it’s best to talk a little more in depth about my brother. – At his core, he’s a pretty decent guy. However, his many character flaws tend to overshadow his decent attributes. He’s extremely loyal, but has a tendency to be loyal to people who will eventually stab him in the back. He’s smart, but lacks motivation a great deal of the time. He has a great sense of humor, but it can be very dark. He sees what I have or have gotten and thinks that even though he hasn’t put the time and effort in, that he should get the same treatment. If he sees your weakness, he will exploit it whenever it is to his advantage. He has a very centric view of his world – we should all do what he wants because we just live in his world. He also has a very LARGE sense of entitlement (and I wish I knew WHERE that came from, because I see so many other people like that too and I just want to beat it out of them!!).

And I think I should point out that I DO love my brother. There are just times (sometimes it is a LOT of the time) when I don’t LIKE him. There is a distinction. And if you have a family member like this, you probably understand more than anyone who doesn’t.

And yet with all of these “flaws” he still is the favored child. Now, when I say “favored”, I mean that he gets the attention, pity, money and unwavering support. My mom isn’t completely blind (just MOSTLY). She wouldn’t trust him to handle her stuff unless it was a choice between him and a complete stranger who looked greasy and seriously sketchy.

Until next time…………

Revenge. Served with a child’s first tape recorder.

Now, I don’t want to come off as some vindictive witch who’s out to expose her brother for the rotten person he tends to be most of the time. Just leave out the vindictive witch part.

The face of the matter is that my brother is clearly seduced by the devil on his shoulder. I think the angel on the other shoulder has been bound and gagged for the majority of his life. An example follows:

My brother seems to find the word “No”, and all of its variations, as a challenge. Telling him not to do it is taken as an invitation.

A prime example is from when I was about 9 or 10 years old. This would make him about 7 or 8. He was told to stay out of my room and out of my stuff. Things had a way of disappearing and then I would be taunted as to their new whereabouts.

The solution for this was to change the door handle to my bedroom door from an unlockable one, to one that required a key. Of course, the solution was temporary and always came with a consequence for me in some fashion.

He had learned to pick the lock with a butter knife. WHERE he had learned that, I can’t say. But if I was inside and he was picking the lock, then when he entered he would rough me up a bit and take something. All of this would leave me crying and screaming for my mother. But when she came to find out what was going on, my brother would say that he hadn’t done anything. And since there was little to no evidence to the contrary, nothing ever came of it.

That is UNTIL one day where I got an idea. Not only would I catch him in the act, but I would have everything ON TAPE for my mother to hear. All I had to do was wait for him to do it again.

My tape recorder was ready. The blank tape was set and ready to go. And then it happened.

He could be heard using the knife to pick the lock. You could hear me telling him to stop it and go away. He didn’t listen of course and continued picking the lock.

Once he finally entered the room, you could hear a scuffle and then me crying.

I had him.

I called my mother, still crying, and told her what he had done.

I told her that I could prove it. I rewound the tape and played the whole thing for her. T-R-O-U-B-L-E was what he was in.

I don’t recall if he continued to break in or not. At least in that house – before we moved to another state. He did break in to my room (as well as other things) during the summers when we were left alone during the day. But that’s another story for another time.

It just completely baffles me how HE is the favorite. Even now, he garners all of my mother’s attention. If he needs money, then there’s plenty. If I needed money, then she would be too broke to give it to me. (She is probably BROKE from giving him money, I’m sure!!!)

She likes him better. Still, to this day. I may be the executor of the will (and maybe that’s my final payback), but I continue to be astounded that he could be so much more to her.

In the beginning…..

In the beginning things were great. There was me, my mom and my dad. Things were good UNTIL my aunt advised my mother that she needed to have another baby. If she didn’t have another baby, then I would be spoiled. (I still fail to see how this would have been a bad thing.)

Apparently my mother agreed because before I was 2, I had a little brother.

Stories were told of how I dropped a wooden play phone on his head as a baby. (THIS is an important detail. It becomes his reason for all of the stupid stuff that he does.)

I am not sure if I didn’t like him, or just jealous of the attention that he got because he was, quite honestly, the cuter of the two of us.

From the very beginning he was more than a handful. Always getting himself into trouble.  And I should tell you that the punishments were not light. Not in the least.

So, WHY would he continue down this path of getting himself into trouble? Well, there’s always that part of me that says it’s because that’s how he got attention. Psychology says that there is positive attention and negative attention, but really it all boils down to ATTENTION. It doesn’t matter what KIND of attention it is, just as long as there is attention.  So, since they chose to give him any attention for the trouble he was making, he would just keep right on doing it.

So, you might be asking yourself –“ What did YOU do for attention? Weren’t you jealous of the attention that he got all of the time?”  Well, I’ll answer the second question first. The simple answer is yes. OF COURSE I was jealous of the attention, but I DEFINITELY was NOT jealous of the punishment. – Now, back to the first question. What I did for attention was nothing really. I eventually would go to school first and become an exceptional student. THAT is how I got my attention. Granted, the attention was short-lived and there was little gotten from it, but my brother did see that I got praise for it.  Because once he started in school, he chose an alternative path. I don’t know if consciously or subconsciously he thought that he couldn’t compete with me in school – OR maybe he just didn’t want to put forth that kind of effort  (But DO know this – my brother is not stupid. Far from it.) , but his path was to be very different.

For my first posting, I will tell you about one of the first things that I can remember my brother doing that would get him into HUGE trouble……

It’s important to note that this house was on a small hill. Our driveway was fairly steep and made of gravel.  On the other side of the road was our mailbox and then a very, very steep drop off.

My mom had taken us to the community pool one summer day.  For whatever reason, we didn’t have the car that day, we had my father’s Ford truck.

It was raining when we returned and my mom had parked the truck and gotten out to open the garage door.

It was at this point, my brother who was sitting in the middle, turned to me and smiled this horrible shit grin. He then reached over and put the truck into neutral. 

This is where I remember rolling down the driveway. After that I don’t remember much.  My mother recalls running down the driveway after us in her swimsuit and flip flops in the rain.

Our mailbox stopped us from going over the drop off on the other side of the road. Lucky for us, my father had used cement when he put the mailbox up.

The bad news was that we were still in the road. We lived in the country and people would haul ASS down the road at all times of day. It was lucky for us that some people who lived nearby were coming down the road and stopped to help. 

While we were alive, my brother was in some SERIOUS trouble. I don’t know what happened exactly, but I would guess that there was spanking involved.

This is one of many stories. Stories that continue to create themselves, even though my brother is in his thirties.

And even though he pulls all of this stupid crap, they still like him better. Seriously.

But I’ll get more into that later…..