Firecrackers

This story is about my sister's boyfriend Bryan. For this story, to protect the innocent, I will refer to him as Brian. Brian lost the use of his hands when he was in high school but that didn't stop him from building huge stone bridges or using Roman candles to light refuse piles on fire. 

I would call him T. Rex behind his back, because his arms had atrophied long ago and it made him look like a tyrannosaurus. He kept jars of bouncy balls on his dusty window sill. He liked to show them off, but it was always awkward because he couldn't catch the balls once they were bounced. He had a beautiful didgeridoo that he kept perched atop a red couch in the living room. I would blow on it and make humming noises until I felt nauseous. 

One Thanksgiving I drove 3000 miles from California to New York with an awesome crossbow to kill a turkey and cook it for my family. There were turkeys all over his property…but he was like NO KILLING TURKEYS on my property. I listened to him. Later on in the early hours of the morning, I went out back to pee in the snow because I like to do that. I realized mid-pee that I was actually peeing on his skill saw. I didn't move an inch. Whatever. His decision resulted in me having to go to a WalMart to buy a turkey! 

I would sometimes search for antique bottles and trilobite fossils with him. He claimed to know where some flowers were that I really wanted to see. Some little yellow lady slippers. He was never able to produce them. Once on a long hike we came across an old cabin where the garden had escaped itself. There were daffodils everywhere, little yellow flowers protruding from the undergrowth. If he thought that those daffodils were going to make up for the mythical lady slippers, he was wrong.   

Last week Brian died and I find myself remembering him fondly. It is an interesting trait in people that we remember the good qualities of the deceased. Brian is lucky in that sense. There were things that even I loved about him. I would never have admitted that while he was alive, but it's true.

Rest in peace, Bryan.

Much ado about something

I will now tell you two stories that involve guys being embarrassed.

I will start with something that happened to my friend Josh once in Beijing. To protect the identities involved I will refer to Josh as Chambliss Masterson as I recount the events that transpired on that cold and dark night so many years ago. Myself and my friend Chambliss Masterson (Josh) were at some charming little German restaurant on the outskirts of town eating spaetzle and drinking beer. Chambliss was in kind of a somber mood because he was having some relationship woes with his girlfriend in the United States, Kaitlin. To protect Kaitlin's identity I will refer to her as Ambrosia in this story. Anyway, Chambliss Masterson was bummed out because it looked as if there was trouble brewing on the horizon in terms of their relationship. Around our third or fourth round of delicious dark stouts, a young Chinese man approached our table peddling his wares. In this particular case what the young man was pushing was pirated DVD's. This was very common, so we both started to leaf through his merchandise which he kept in a cardboard box. Immediately Chambliss came across a Sex and the City box set which he knew Ambrosia would love...so he got the whole glittery pink thing. Instantly he seemed very interested to know if I was going to get anything. There was lots of good stuff in there, BBC documentaries, Kon-Tiki, I even remember seeing Deliverance. That is worth owning! But suddenly I understood that Chambliss just wanted to sandwich his Sex and the City DVD's between legit titles. He would say, "Let me carry those for you." A seemingly friendly gesture, with a slightly less than honest motivation. If Chambliss was going to buy a big pink Sex and the City box set, I was determined to make sure he carried that big sparkly wedding cake of a DVD collection all the way home under his arm for the world to see. I wasn't going to let him sandwich that big pink glitter jewel between a directors cut of Apocalypse Now and Alien. No way! So, like a man, I didn't buy a single DVD that night! and yes, Chambliss carried that girly sparkle package all the way home. He took responsibility for himself that night. Like a soldier with a noble purpose he marched off into that night with his head held high, even though he totally had to drag that thing across town for everyone to see! It's not like there aren't a billion people in China either! I'm pretty sure a billion people saw him carrying that dainty laced-up box home that night! I'm just glad I was one of those lucky billion.

When I was about seventeen I really wanted that song "Nothing Compares to You" by Sinead O'Connor. Unfortunately, then, the iTunes store did not exist. If I wanted that song I would need to buy the whole album. So I drove down to Borders only to find that I couldn't go through with it. I made a couple dry runs, but opted to ask my sister if she would buy it for me. The next day we both went down to Borders and got the album. I even pretended to mock my sister's musical tastes in line, so the other patrons and the check-out lady would believe I thought Sinead O'Connor was stupid. I know, it was clever and my sister got a kick out of it too, I think. It was funny to pretend I was an asshole in public, when in secret I couldn't wait to sing along to "Nothing Compares to You." And I did. As soon as I was alone. Unfortunately the next day I was in my car singing the high part in my best falsetto voice at a stop light thinking the windows were up--but they weren't. To my horror, I looked to my right and saw a jeep full of my water polo friends staring at me. They were so shocked they hadn't even started to laugh. They got over their shock eventually, and they did laugh about it. It was embarrassing. I blame my sister for the whole thing. She can be so inconsiderate! It's like she planned it or something. She's so messed up like that! Jeez.

The truth about the bee decline in America

I discovered something alarming today. It seems as though my sister may not be as sweet and innocent as she appears on the surface. The world knows her as a soft spoken accountant, Buddhist, and amateur cake maker. I too thought this until I did a little snooping. It now appears that my sister may in fact be the reason for the bee decline in America. The most shocking aspect of this discovery is not that she may be solely responsible for the disappearance of billions of bees. . .but that she is torturing them as well. I first grew suspicious when I stumbled across a large pile of disassembled bee boxes with dried comb in them. She claimed they were old hives that no longer housed bees, and that she had harvested all the honey from them. But then out of the corner of my eye I spotted about ten cheese graters tied with a rope near the bee boxes and combs...why would anyone have so many cheese graters unless they were in fact torturing bees? Ask yourself that. Suspicious, I went to look at her active bee hives and was alarmed to find what I can only call a bee concentration camp. Complete with an electric fence. My sister said the fence was to keep bears out. Maybe. . .it seemed to me the fence was to keep the bees in.  It was all adding up. My sister is not only an accountant, but a black market operator. She has undoubtedly forced countless bees into the international underground sex trade. When the bees don't comply with her she threatens them with bodily harm with cheese graters. She is at the top of a racket too large and dangerous for me take down alone. I need your help. Capital donations to my PayPal account for starters. At the very least, warn every bee you see. If you see a bee in a park or at a work picnic, yell at it! Get its attention! "Be careful, bee, there is a girl in New York who wants to hurt you with a cheese grater and sell you as a sex worker!" If we all do a little to help maybe the bees will be wiser and my sister will be stopped.

The mysterious past

Today I decided to break away from my botanical theme, but for good reason. Yesterday afternoon I did a little treasure hunting in my sister's backyard. The area has been inhabited by humans since the 1600s, so I thought there was a good chance of uncovering some little treasures. . .and I did. First I discovered an old medicine bottle dating from the 1890s, Dr. King's New Discovery for Coughs and Colds. Next came two little un-embossed pill bottles. Judging by mold markings and glass color I was able to tell they were from Chicago, but manufactured in southern Illinois. The fourth find was confounding. It had a daffodil design on the front, which suggested to me it was for women. It was some sort of gold-gilded large hoop earring holder or perhaps it was used to hold diamonds or small sharks teeth to ward off demons. It's impossible to know for sure. Objects like these have been all but forgotten by modern women. Maybe someday man will invent a time-machine and questions like these will be laid to rest once and for all.