Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Clearly there’s no way any of you could know my brothers, but you should want to. There are two of them, and they’re pretty fabulous blokes. The middle child, Val, is almost thirty (which is clearly freaky) and a unique spirit.
He once went up to a girl he works with and informed her that she’d be “a fit vessel for his seed.” No one ever slaps him; they just collapse into helpless giggling piles of people.
When we were kids there was a bathroom on the main floor of our house, and the bathroom was at eye-level. The Peeping-Tom Design Co. was consulted heavily during construction. There was a sheer curtain across the window, but our yard was large enough that no one was going to walk past one of us using the commode and cripple us emotionally during our formative years.
My mother was a very unhappy woman when we lived in “Bumblefuck” New Brunswick, and in her misery she was known to behave somewhat erratically. One day we were to go swimming at the home of one of our parents’ friends. It was a very hot day summer day, one of the four you could experience in this town, known for its never-ending winters. We were all really looking forward to going, and were bugging her ass to get going when she said the following.
“Who keeps putting the Kleenex box on the window sill in the downstairs bathroom?”
This question was met by a trio of slack-jawed mouth-breathers.
“We’re not leaving until someone tells me that they did it. You’re not in trouble, I just want to know who’s doing it and why.”
We all sat down and twitched a little. Our mother is an unmovable force, if she says we’re not doing something we’re not. Sometimes I wonder if she didn’t secretly enjoy doing this sort of thing just to lord her power over us.
It felt like about three days had passed, so about five minutes, when I cracked under the pressure.
“I did it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I just felt like it.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
It had been a gamble. Clearly she could have decided that that did make her angry, and that there was no way we were going swimming (I would not have been left there by myself. I was accident prone). It is a testament to her lunacy that she believed me. I was obviously lying in order to go swimming; otherwise I would have had a better story than the one I offered. She didn’t care, maybe she was just relieved that she hadn’t experienced a complete meltdown; that the Kleenex boxes of the world weren’t rising up and trying to escape from the house. If she couldn’t get away from this hellhole, the paper products certainly couldn’t!
So, we went swimming, and it was heavenly. For years to follow this was one of the great mysteries of my life. Everyone else was happy to tease me periodically, but predictably, about it. I maintained that I had lied to them, and that I had only wanted to swim, but they didn’t believe me. Plus, mocking me was much more fun.
Until I turned nineteen.
Val and I share a similar circle of friends. One night we were out at a bar when he was visiting me at school, and we felt the need to come clean to each other about some of our previous indiscretions.
“L, I thought that you should know, I was the one who put the Kleenex box on the window sill.” This was delivered with a certain amount of solemnity, such as you might expect from someone announcing an engagement, or serious illness. He waited expectantly.
I didn’t disappoint, I shrieked at him like a harpy on ‘roids. It was probably a great show for the bystanders, considering I was screaming my lungs out about a Kleenex box. After I’d had a chance to regain my composure; to come to grips with over a decade of false accusations and mocking, I knew how to get back at him.
“That’s fine. I thought YOU should know that I’m the one who took your Corey Hart “Boy in the Box” tape. Amanda didn’t steal it.” Amanda was this hyperactive kid I was friends with in grade school. He must have really missed that tape, because he had brought up its disappearance more than a few times over the years.
“What? Why?”
“You thumped me one in front of my friends and I was mad so I threw your tape in the garbage.”
Silence.
“L…that’s really messed up. That’s so vindictive. I can’t believe you didn’t say anything all these years.” He looked at me with a mixture of fear, awe, and revulsion.
I really don’t see how what I did was any different from him putting a Kleenex box on the window sill to keep the curtains closed so that no one could see his “bits” and then lying about it for ever. Because that’s why he did it. He didn’t want to risk anyone peeking in on him while he went to the bathroom. Because God knows there was a line stretching around the block of people who wanted to catch a glimpse of him in the can. Although, in that town…
He once went up to a girl he works with and informed her that she’d be “a fit vessel for his seed.” No one ever slaps him; they just collapse into helpless giggling piles of people.
When we were kids there was a bathroom on the main floor of our house, and the bathroom was at eye-level. The Peeping-Tom Design Co. was consulted heavily during construction. There was a sheer curtain across the window, but our yard was large enough that no one was going to walk past one of us using the commode and cripple us emotionally during our formative years.
My mother was a very unhappy woman when we lived in “Bumblefuck” New Brunswick, and in her misery she was known to behave somewhat erratically. One day we were to go swimming at the home of one of our parents’ friends. It was a very hot day summer day, one of the four you could experience in this town, known for its never-ending winters. We were all really looking forward to going, and were bugging her ass to get going when she said the following.
“Who keeps putting the Kleenex box on the window sill in the downstairs bathroom?”
This question was met by a trio of slack-jawed mouth-breathers.
“We’re not leaving until someone tells me that they did it. You’re not in trouble, I just want to know who’s doing it and why.”
We all sat down and twitched a little. Our mother is an unmovable force, if she says we’re not doing something we’re not. Sometimes I wonder if she didn’t secretly enjoy doing this sort of thing just to lord her power over us.
It felt like about three days had passed, so about five minutes, when I cracked under the pressure.
“I did it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I just felt like it.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
It had been a gamble. Clearly she could have decided that that did make her angry, and that there was no way we were going swimming (I would not have been left there by myself. I was accident prone). It is a testament to her lunacy that she believed me. I was obviously lying in order to go swimming; otherwise I would have had a better story than the one I offered. She didn’t care, maybe she was just relieved that she hadn’t experienced a complete meltdown; that the Kleenex boxes of the world weren’t rising up and trying to escape from the house. If she couldn’t get away from this hellhole, the paper products certainly couldn’t!
So, we went swimming, and it was heavenly. For years to follow this was one of the great mysteries of my life. Everyone else was happy to tease me periodically, but predictably, about it. I maintained that I had lied to them, and that I had only wanted to swim, but they didn’t believe me. Plus, mocking me was much more fun.
Until I turned nineteen.
Val and I share a similar circle of friends. One night we were out at a bar when he was visiting me at school, and we felt the need to come clean to each other about some of our previous indiscretions.
“L, I thought that you should know, I was the one who put the Kleenex box on the window sill.” This was delivered with a certain amount of solemnity, such as you might expect from someone announcing an engagement, or serious illness. He waited expectantly.
I didn’t disappoint, I shrieked at him like a harpy on ‘roids. It was probably a great show for the bystanders, considering I was screaming my lungs out about a Kleenex box. After I’d had a chance to regain my composure; to come to grips with over a decade of false accusations and mocking, I knew how to get back at him.
“That’s fine. I thought YOU should know that I’m the one who took your Corey Hart “Boy in the Box” tape. Amanda didn’t steal it.” Amanda was this hyperactive kid I was friends with in grade school. He must have really missed that tape, because he had brought up its disappearance more than a few times over the years.
“What? Why?”
“You thumped me one in front of my friends and I was mad so I threw your tape in the garbage.”
Silence.
“L…that’s really messed up. That’s so vindictive. I can’t believe you didn’t say anything all these years.” He looked at me with a mixture of fear, awe, and revulsion.
I really don’t see how what I did was any different from him putting a Kleenex box on the window sill to keep the curtains closed so that no one could see his “bits” and then lying about it for ever. Because that’s why he did it. He didn’t want to risk anyone peeking in on him while he went to the bathroom. Because God knows there was a line stretching around the block of people who wanted to catch a glimpse of him in the can. Although, in that town…
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