When Brothers Fight

Siblings fight.  It’s inevitable, and it’s part of life.  Little Brother and I were no different.  Being two years apart probably didn’t help either.  And when I say two years apart, I mean almost to the day.  Two years and three days apart.  So we shared everything.  Toys.  Friends.  Birthdays.  Yes, even our birthdays were conjoined.

Up until the ages of six and four mom dressed us alike.  Our clothes always matched right down to the socks and shoes we were wearing.  And people always asked if we were twins.  I remember even as a six-year-old thinking that was a moronic question to ask about two children with an obvious height and age difference, but there must have been just as many morons back then as there are now.

Aside from sharing all the aforementioned things, Little Brother and I also shared a room up until I turned thirteen.  So privacy was never a luxury either of us had.  We might as well have been twins.

But I’m getting off topic.  Fighting.  Right.

Little Brother and I were notorious for getting into fights.  Especially when mom and dad weren’t looking.  And then as soon as they were looking, we were best friends.

We were actors in a sense.  When mom and dad were around the curtain was up and we were on stage, our roles complimenting each other’s perfectly.  Sure we’d squabble and bicker, but nothing too much past a PG rating.

But when we were left alone, and I’ve mentioned plenty of times before that neither of us should have ever been left alone, the act was over, the scene ended, and we were mortal enemies once more.

I remember one time in specific that was truly a horrifying experience.  It still makes me cringe to this day.

Little Brother and I were about twelve and fourteen respectively.  It was summertime, and mom and dad had just left for their Wednesday afternoon Bible study.

Now typically, during mom and dad’s absence on Wednesdays, Little Brother and I would join forces in evil and do things we knew we weren’t allowed to do when mom and dad were around.  For example, we weren’t allowed to watch the television show Charmed for the fact that it was a very risqué show with very adult themes that our parents didn’t really want us exposed to yet.

Well, on Wednesdays, we watched Charmed.  It was our pact.  Neither of us would tattle on the other for simple fear of getting in trouble themselves.  We felt in control.  We felt so bad.

Once again, I’ve digressed.  Fighting!

One Wednesday afternoon, during Bible study, Little Brother and I got into it over something.

I really wish I could tell you what we were fighting over.  I wish I could tell you it was over something important.  Something I never forgot.  But in all honesty, I’m not that petty.  Plus I’m pretty sure it was over something extremely insignificant.

So we got into a verbal argument.  Names were called.  Insults were thrown.  Doors were slammed.

Then it escalated.

The next thing I know we’re pushing each other.

Then we have each other by the throat and we’re shoving each other around the house.

See?  Preacher’s kids really are evil.

All of a sudden, we both hear a crack as I shove Little Brother into a wall in his bedroom.

Our eyes grow wide as we come to the realization of what has just happened.

At that moment, an unspoken truce was formed.

And this wasn’t like the Charmed truce.  This was much more important.  This was a truce to save our lives.

I don’t think my brain has ever worked that fast in my life.  Not before, not after.  I could’ve kept up with a supercomputer with ease.

I looked to Little Brother and said, “Mom keeps the paint for the walls under the sink.  You go grab that while I grab the spackle from the kitchen closet and a paintbrush from the drawer.  Meet me back here when you have the paint.”

I don’t know how I knew the word “spackle.”  I don’t know how I knew where everything was.  I just knew.  My brain accessed all the background information stored somewhere in the recesses of my mind and used it in a time of great need.

Unfortunately, even with all the knowledge in the universe at our command, we were unable to properly repair the eight-inch, horizontal crack in the wall.

So we did the best we could with what we had readily available.

“That Star Wars poster wasn’t there when we left,” dad said in that tone.

Dad must have the knowledge of the universe at his command all the time.

“We thought it would look good there,” I said quickly.

He didn’t respond.  He didn’t ask any more questions.  He just took the poster down and saw the crack.

Dad and mom both said they were really impressed we were able to come up with a plot to use the spackle and paint like we did.  They couldn’t believe we actually were able to think of it all on our own.

We still got in a lot of trouble.

Robot Mom

Every mother has to do it.  Every mother hates doing it.  And ours was no exception.  What I’m referring to is when a mother has to scold her children for something they’ve done wrong.

Most mothers like to carry the belief that their children are perfect little angels who can do no wrong, and they live in that blissful world of ignorance until they’re met face-to-face with the dark evil that resides within the heart of all children. 

Sometimes it only takes one or two confrontations with this evil for the mother to snap and transform into the alternate, believer-in-punishment mother that has to take control.

Sometimes, it takes a bit more “prodding” from the children.  It’s usually when it takes a bit more prodding, however, the final result is more explosive than it is when it only takes one or two confrontations.

Basically, picture your mother as a volcano that’s been dormant for hundreds of years.  Before you know it, your mom is Vesuvius, and you’re Pompeii.

Now most children are aware that the father is the primary dealer of punishment when it comes to misbehavior.  As a result, most children tend to behave themselves more appropriately when their father is present, and rampage around when dad’s not looking.

Little Brother and I didn’t really have that option too often.  Both of our parents were around most of the time.  So mom never had to revert to that alternate personality that lies dormant in all mothers.

However, there were rare occasions where dad would be out for some reason or another, and we were left alone with mom. 

We should have never been left alone with mom.

We were monsters.

Actually, looking back on things, we never should’ve been left alone in general.  If you’ve read Microwaves Beware Part 2 you’ll know exactly what I mean.  And there are many more stories within that category, but I’ll write about those at some other point.

Little Brother and I knew for a fact that when dad was gone, we could get away with murder.  We pushed mom’s limits often.  We’d run around the house like crazy little leprechauns on crack.

We’d slide down the stairs in laundry baskets.

Make messes that encompassed the entirety of the house and refuse to clean it up.

And pretty much any other form of completely ignoring the authority our mother had over us.

It was during these times that our mother would try to be the good, calm mother that she is, and talk us down peacefully.  However, after continued ignorance from our end, mom would revert to the preinstalled programming that all mothers carry.

Little Brother and I, who were still young and unfamiliar with the ways women work, were always startled by this new, in-control mom who would yell and tell us what to do.

We were scared of this new entity that wasn’t easy to manipulate and made us clean up the messes we’d made.

All we knew was that this wasn’t our real mother.

This physically identical copy had replaced our mother during a split second window in which we weren’t fully paying attention.

We called her…Robot Mama.

Robot Mama yelled and stomped around the house, telling us that it was our fault she was like this, telling us that it was our fault she was yelling.

Our belief in Robot Mama evolved and became so real that Little Brother and I began having nightmares about this evil, mechanical entity.

I remember one night in specific that Little Brother woke up crying because, in his nightmare, he had opened the closet in our house where the vacuum was kept, and found the robotic twin of our mom next to the vacuum, standing there silently, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

It wasn’t long after his retelling of this nightmare that I too began having nightmares of my own, one repeating nightmare, where I would be running from Robot Mama as she clomped around the house.  Somehow in my dream I would manage to sneak around behind her, and the sight that awaited me was a terrifying one.  Right there, in the middle of her back, was a giant Duracell or Energizer battery, powering the creature.

Being awaked from these dreams by our mother was usually a chaotic experience.  We were already upset, but seeing our mother immediately after and not knowing if she was the real mom or the mechanized monster, was absolutely terrifying.

As we got older, the appearances of Robot Mama became more and more scarce.  Whether that’s because of us behaving more, our mother becoming more acclimated to our antics, or a combination of both, I can’t say. 

However I’d like to believe that it was because Robot Mama’s battery died and real mom got rid of her in a garage sale.

Microwaves Beware Part 2

So a little while ago I posted Microwaves Beware Part 1 saying that I would be posting Part 2 within a few weeks...and I suppose it HAS been a few weeks...kinda...

Ok, ok.  It's been two months, I know.  Give me a break.  You try studying Chinese and then tell me you have time to answer to every whim of my reading audience.  Do you think Mr. Rogers dropped everything he was doing to please the small children who clung to his show as if it was a religion?

Well...I guess he kind of did...seeing as that was his job.  But you know what I mean.

Anyway, this is yet another story of why I should not be allowed to have microwaves, let alone use them.  And either by a turn of ironic fate, or by the fact that my supervisors read my prior blog about "microwave safety", my roommates and I no longer have a microwave in our dorm room.

I never really thought about that before now, but it's kind of funny either way.  Remind me to write a note to Karma at some point telling her "good game."

So here's the story now.

I was 12 and Little Brother was 10.  It was a boring summer day, and all the cartoons we had wanted to watch were done for the day.  It was about mid afternoon and total summer boredom had set in.

Mom was out in her garden, and dad has just stepped out to set up the sprinkler to help out our front lawn that was suffering from heat stroke.

Little brother and I decided that our toys and video games were boring and that the only thing that would quench our thirst for something to do was the microwave.

We didn’t really make plans of what we wanted to put in there.  All we knew was something was going in there and we were gonna see what happened to it.

I think if there had been a plan at all, it was to put different things in there to watch the different results.  Fortunately for us, and the microwave, we only got through one experiment before our research got shut down.

Our first, and only, test subject was a potato chip.

I don’t know how we landed on the idea of a potato chip, but it was available, and we could reach them in the cabinet.  They would do just fine.

We had enough brains to grab a plate from the cupboard at least.  We put a single potato chip on the plate and placed it in the microwave.

Thankfully for our young, easily distracted minds, this was one of the earlier, not as complicated and advanced microwaves that required a secret, eighty-button code to set the cooking time.

We decided thirty minutes was ample time to conduct our experiment on the potato chip.

Pay attention that I said thirty minutes and not seconds.

Yes.  We’re crazy.  We know.

Five minutes passed and nothing really changed other than the fact that the potato chip browned ever so slightly and the air had a smell of “fresh” potato chips.  The experiment was going smoothly so far.

It was around the ten-minute mark that things started to get moving at a quicker pace.  The chip had turned a dark, charred brown, and the air no longer smelled like fresh potato chip, but overcooked, potentially burning potato chip.

I remember it was also at this point that we began to get a little nervous.  We looked around to make sure mom and dad were still not present and weren’t able to disrupt this effort to make advances in the field of nuclear science.  We continued to push forward with our experiment.

At fifteen minutes, halfway through the originally set time, we knew we’d taken things too far.

The chip was crisp and black, and had in fact begun to ignite in spots.  Somewhere along the way, the plate had begun to fill up with a liquid that we later found out was some sort of grease.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we actually managed to liquefy part of the potato chip.

The air definitely smelled like something was burning, though whether it was a potato chip smell, or burning flesh, was indistinguishable anymore.

We quickly popped open the door to the microwave and grabbed the nearest things we could to put out the ignited potato chip, which just so happened to be the spray bottle of water my mom kept for her plants.  It would have to do.

The smell, that up until that point had been only slight in the air, flowed out of the microwave like water flows through a crack in the Hoover Dam.

Panicking, Little Brother continued to make sure the chip was out by dousing it with water, while I ran to the bathroom to grab the Lysol air freshener.

I ran through the house, releasing a spray of blueberry aerosol through the air generously.  That would cover up the fact that we’d burned a potato chip to indistinguishable proportions right?

Wrong.  As soon as dad came in the house, he smelled the mixture of burning potato chip/flesh and blueberry and became suspicious.

Our nonchalant cartoon watching in the other room didn’t work for a second.

Needless to say, we got in a lot of trouble and weren’t allowed to use the microwave for a long time afterwards.

Also the plate we did this all on had a permanent scorch mark on it.  Mom used it as a constant reminder of our stupidity.

I think she still has it too…

So in conclusion, me + microwaves = doom.  Microwaves had better look out when they see me coming with a food item, or any other item for that matter.

Microwaves Beware Part 1

I was reminded the other day of why I should avoid microwaves at all cost.  I’m a microwave murderer.  Not a premeditative murderer, mind you, I’m more of a microwave man slaughterer.  You know, the one where it’s an accident.

Maybe it’s my curiosity toward the idea of pumping things full of nuclear waves. 

Maybe it’s my inability to figure out the stupid buttons because it’s never as easy as pushing one button to cook your food. 

Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m too scatter brained and ADD to pay attention to things I put in the microwave and forgot about until odd smells invade my nasal cavity.

The world may never know.

For example, yesterday, one of the guys on my floor offered my roommate and I some of his leftover hot wings.  Being poor college students that love to eat (and man do I love to eat) we eagerly accepted.

He handed me a cardboard takeout box.  I didn’t bother to look inside the box first to check on the status of these hot wings.  All I knew was that they were cold, and they needed to get all warm and cozy before entering my stomach.  What better appliance to use than our friend the microwave?

I placed the box in the microwave and began the task of pushing the eighty buttons it takes to warm up my future snack for thirty seconds.

Once this is done, and I’m sure they’re really only going to be cooking for 30 seconds, I begin doing other things.  I put some music on, check my email, and run to the bathroom to check the mirror to make sure it’s still the face I’m used to looking at and not someone else’s.

That’s when I smell something…odd.  It smells like someone’s cooking marshmallows.  All I can think at this point is, “Oh my god!  Smores would be so good right now!”

Then I slowly realize that there’s no way anyone could be properly roasting marshmallows in the dorms.

I follow the smell from my bathroom towards my microwave.  My mind starts thinking of the horrible things that could be happening in there to make such an awful smell, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never smelled hot wings smell like that.

I peer through the window on the microwave and find, to my horror, that for once my imagination wasn’t enough to encompass what my eyes were seeing.

Flames covered the entire take out box.  Not a few sparks.  Not a small, candle-like flame.  I’m talking a literal fire in my microwave.

Apparently, whatever place the guy got the hot wings from wrapped the hot wings in two layers of aluminum foil before putting them in the take out box.

If it were me, I would’ve just slapped the wings in the box and called it good.

But apparently that’s only me, because my roommate informed me that wrapping perishable foodstuffs, like hot wings, in tin foil is a very common occurrence and that I was stupid for ruining our snack.

I ran cups of water back and forth from the bathroom to put out the fire in the microwave.  Once it was finally out, I carried the charred box into the bathroom like a pallbearer carries a coffin at a funeral.  I placed its body in the tub and ran some more water on it, just in case.

The cremation ceremony that followed was a solemn one.

I then went back to look at the damage in the microwave.  Mr. Clean Magic Erasers were definitely going to be on my list of cleaning supplies to buy.

After purchasing said Magic Erasers, I proceeded to cleaning the microwave.

Regardless of the claims that these Magic Erasers in fact do incorporate the use of magic in their cleaning powers, no amount of magic was able to completely clean the burn marks out of the microwave.

She still works, but I guarantee my friend the microwave, is no longer my friend.

This brings me to another story from my teenage years concerning a microwave and why I should never be allowed to use them.  But I'll mention that next time, otherwise this blog would be WAY too long.