Post 5: "Can't Take My Eyes off of You"
Mark and me, 1968
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Mother Teresa
When dad dropped me off after the weekday bar visits, it was time to engage in the Smith Sibling War Games. Like boot camp for Killer Instinct, or The Hunger Games, with the only enrollees being my older brother Mark and me. Mark was five years older, stronger, smarter and tougher, so he had the all-around advantage. It would inevitably begin with routine verbal warfare (“hey little moron piece of crap, how would you like your eyes poked out today?”) to my exquisitely lame (“ooohh I’m telling mom when she gets home”) which never worked anyway. She’d just gruffly wave us off to our rooms and told us to leave her alone. If we weren’t hemorrhaging or missing a limb it just didn’t merit a response in her book.
One of the main objects of the Wars was to get me to finish Mark’s chores, establish his superiority, and he won. I was usually punched and chased about, and occasionally I could get a swipe in. Because of my inferior battle skills, I had to resort to guerrilla tactics:
*I would empty a bottle of bleach in with all his jeans in the clothes washer.
*I would hide his glue stash.
*I would spit into his soda when he wasn’t looking.
It was basically the principle of the pecking order at play here in the house. The older brothers razzed Mark so Mark razzed me.
Overall, I got off light. I faced one-on-one combat. Mark endured four against one. My four older brothers had locked Mark in the attic for hours when he was younger. They stuffed Mark in the dryer. They commiserated with Mark that he was adopted and would need to be returned to his family of origin. Besides believing I was the adopted child, Mark spared me the worst of the treatment that the older boys meted out on him. Don’t get me wrong. The mere mention of Mark’s name would cause me to hyperventilate and dive for whatever cover I could find. Because of Mark, I learned to clear the backyard fence in a single leap faster than your mother can wipe dirt off your face.
My greatest consolation during those years was that at least I got to go to the bar in the afternoons, spin on the barstools and play with the pinball machine. Maybe if my dad had included Mark more, and taken both of us to the bar, we could have snuck a beer, played some pinball, and reached a truce in all the madness we faced.
Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
When dad dropped me off after the weekday bar visits, it was time to engage in the Smith Sibling War Games. Like boot camp for Killer Instinct, or The Hunger Games, with the only enrollees being my older brother Mark and me. Mark was five years older, stronger, smarter and tougher, so he had the all-around advantage. It would inevitably begin with routine verbal warfare (“hey little moron piece of crap, how would you like your eyes poked out today?”) to my exquisitely lame (“ooohh I’m telling mom when she gets home”) which never worked anyway. She’d just gruffly wave us off to our rooms and told us to leave her alone. If we weren’t hemorrhaging or missing a limb it just didn’t merit a response in her book.
One of the main objects of the Wars was to get me to finish Mark’s chores, establish his superiority, and he won. I was usually punched and chased about, and occasionally I could get a swipe in. Because of my inferior battle skills, I had to resort to guerrilla tactics:
*I would empty a bottle of bleach in with all his jeans in the clothes washer.
*I would hide his glue stash.
*I would spit into his soda when he wasn’t looking.
It was basically the principle of the pecking order at play here in the house. The older brothers razzed Mark so Mark razzed me.
Overall, I got off light. I faced one-on-one combat. Mark endured four against one. My four older brothers had locked Mark in the attic for hours when he was younger. They stuffed Mark in the dryer. They commiserated with Mark that he was adopted and would need to be returned to his family of origin. Besides believing I was the adopted child, Mark spared me the worst of the treatment that the older boys meted out on him. Don’t get me wrong. The mere mention of Mark’s name would cause me to hyperventilate and dive for whatever cover I could find. Because of Mark, I learned to clear the backyard fence in a single leap faster than your mother can wipe dirt off your face.
My greatest consolation during those years was that at least I got to go to the bar in the afternoons, spin on the barstools and play with the pinball machine. Maybe if my dad had included Mark more, and taken both of us to the bar, we could have snuck a beer, played some pinball, and reached a truce in all the madness we faced.
Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.