Brother Love...

He would sit on top of me, pinning my arms to the ground with his knees, preparation for his saliva viscosity tests. Holding his face directly over mine, Kenny would drool a big gob of saliva oozing down at my nose just to see how long a string he could let it stretch into and still be able to suck it back up into his mouth. I so miss those days. The BB bullets in the ass, the Indian burns, the noogies that apparently I had ordered...But I still love my big brother. Or at least that's what my shrink says I need to keep telling myself. I love my big brother. I love my big brother. I love...

When it was time to think about college, my parents said: “Hugh, you're an adult now. Find a college you want to go to, apply, get accepted, and we'll send you there.” So I applied to seven schools that were girls schools and had just now opened up admissions for boys. I may be dumb but I'm not stupid. My folks found out about my plan though and said: “Hugh, we were wrong. You're not an adult and we're going to pick the college for you.” I wound up going to the University of Georgia because my older sister lived nearby and could “keep an eye on me”. I was one of 7 hippie kids from the North, drowning in a sea of Gant shirts, Weegin tassel loafers, and rolled umbrellas that you never open, even in a deluge. It wasn't a good year. I spent a lot of time in my room, drying banana peels on laundry lines of twine stretched from corner to corner, determined to see if you really could get high when you smoke them. You do, but only because if you replace oxygen with anything else, like the smoke from banana peels for instance, you get high...lightheaded really, just before you vomit or pass out. Surprisingly, UGA didn't invite me back. But my point here is that I did accomplish one thing that year. I grew. Four inches and 50 pounds. The two things that I did consistently were to skip classes, and go to the gym to lift weights. I was eager to get back home to see my darling big brother and turn our relationship around, preferably with my knees pinning his shoulders to the ground. When my moment of confrontation finally materialized, when I could finally throw off the yoke of servitude, no more my brother's whipping boy, he beat me again. Kenny simply said that wrestling and physical confrontation was for children, and walked away. And that, as they say, was that. Damn.
My shrink laughed at me when I told him that story. Now he's all mad because I wasn't able to suck the saliva back up into my mouth. He didn't have to get all pissy about it. Some people just can't take a joke...