This is a photo of Joe and me when we were young boys (if you couldn't tell already).
Joe is on the right, sporting his tragic bowl-haircut as he maneuvers a lawnmower around the back yard. A few yards behind him is an incredibly young me; I'm still in diapers, still have the curly blonde hair that Dad hadn't hacked off yet. And while sporting a pretty slick pair of nikes, I'm pushing a plastic Thomas the Tank Engine -- the closest thing I could find to a lawnmower.
It is a great photo. Sometimes I look at it and wonder what we talked about as we circled the yard -- or if I could even talk at that point.
I wonder about this because I know what we talk about now and I'd love to figure out when it all started. Perhaps the seeds lie in that photo somewhere.
Or perhaps it never really started, it was just always who we were. And if that's the case, maybe it will never really end.
Wherever the foundation lies, this is where we are today:
There is no context to be given here, or in any of the ones that follow.
At 8:12 on a Monday night, this is what my older brother sends me.
Just keep in mind in when reading all of these, I am the blue [and before the software update, green] dialogue box. Joe is the white one. Or if you're colorblind, I'm on the right, Joe's on the left.
A classic drunk rant from Joe. It's sad that the date and time isn't shown here, but I'd guess it's about 10 on a Friday night, and I'd also venture a guess that earlier in the day he'd been reading something about Britain and its deferential policy towards a much more aggressive and hostile Germany.
There is so much going on here. Don't bother trying to untangle it all.
Siri is the "intelligent personal assistant" that is programed into all the Apple 4S phones. Basically, it's a computer program that can answer questions and even make recommendations.
On the apple website, for example, here's a screenshot of Siri in action.
You would say in to the phone: "On May 19 remind me it's dad's birthday" and Siri would then say back to you in her robotic voice "Here's your reminder for May 19, 2012 at 9am" and Siri would go into your calendar and create a reminder for that date and time titled "Dad's Birthday."
It's pretty incredible.
So of course Joe, who doesn't even own an iPhone 4S, upon discovering the existence Siri, relays the transcript of a conversation that never took place between him and a computer program where he asks the program about fitting people in the basement, and the program's answer contains a hint of racism as well as a winky face.
Siri would plague many subsequent conversations, with Joe treating her as a real human being -- ones where her feelings were hurt, or Joe was trying to turn her against me.
Clearly the first text Joe sent was in a response to some argument I was making in regards to the first amendment, which I believed involved Netflix.
The next text is Joe at his moronic best, mis-quoting Elvis and throwing in a winky face.
The third one is a link to an article, but I couldn't show the follow-up text because it contained some of the most vulgar jargon in the english language.
As I went back through our text history, many funny conversations were off-limits because Joe and I are quite prone to vulgar outbursts at each other. Mom, if you're reading this, we both learned that sort of language from Dad. That was just how he spoke when you weren't around.
Joe trying to plagiarize the opening lines of 1984, me calling him on it, and then me trying to plagiarize the chorus from George Strait's song, Love Without End, Amen.
This is what Joe does at 8:30 am on a Friday morning.
This string of texts was sent during the drive back from Ryan's Ironman in Florida.
Notice at first Joe plays along, then as I drag it on with progressively cleverer puns, he vents his frustration, then ignores me.
A quick side note: nothing like a few good Historical Animal Puns to make a 14 hour drive go by quicker.
This is me sending Joe a photo I took of Brogan's passport photo. Brogan looks awful in the photo, honestly awful -- and I sought Joe's counsel on how to appropriately handle the whole debacle.
Needless to say, we weren't happy about having to deal with this. I'm not sure Brogan was either.
At first, this is just more fun with text lingo, quotation marks and smiley faces.
Then texting as if it were a telegraph.
Then retreating behind the familiar "???" when called on his moronic behavior.
This one made me laugh the hardest as I was going back through all of the texts.
It all starts with me aggressively lecturing Joe about the difficulties of the real world for some reason.
And then I just picture him reading these while he's at brunch with Liana and her father and he excuses himself momentarily to type a text and they look at him and must picture him saying something like "can I call you afterwards?" but instead he's actually giving me the finger over text and calling me a fag.
Oh, how stark the difference is between perception and reality at times.
Now, when Joe asks me those dumb questions -- like the one about Fuzzy Wuzzy -- I direct him to ask Liana those questions.
This works because he'll either ask Liana, in which case he won't bug me anymore, or he just stops asking me in the fear that I'm going to tell Liana about all of this and she'll realize how much of a moron he is and leave him. Either way, I don't have to answer fucking questions about Fuzzy Wuzzy.
Smiley face made yet another appearance, this time as Joe tries to claim that he's murdered people.
We often take credit for things we had no hand in.
For example, after Gaddafi was murdered, Joe sent me a text assuring me that he had nothing to do with it, but then in the very next text, he sent me a winky face to assure me that he wasn't being fully honest. I couldn't show a photo of this, because after the winky face, Joe sent me something that should never be repeated again.
Joe entertaining himself on his Friday lunch break.
I read this and wonder, "He really has a law degree?"
But of all the texts, this is the one that I think of when I think of Joe.
Yes, we engage in some of the dumbest texts known to man. Yes, we don't always use language that Granny or Mom would approve of. And yes, if you were to read our text history, you would be horribly offended, confused, alarmed; you would think our phones had been briefly stolen by homicidal racists, moronic teenage girls and grotesquely vulgar adult men.
But when it's late and I just want a beer and someone to listen because my heart is in pieces, he's the first person I call.
I can't tell you what it all means; the times we've ridden together and had conversations about travel and love and other conversation we've had on those same rides that weren't much more sophisticated than the ones you just read, or when we smoked cigars and drank cheap whiskey on a rooftop in Guatemala as a gentle drizzle started to fall and the world started to spin, or when we raced Ironmans and sprint distance triathlons alongside each other, or when we got piss drunk on tequila and missed a flight back home to Singapore, or when we stood and fought and Joe helped a huge woman find her way to the ground.
I can only tell you that I recall those moments with a bizarre sense of pride, because I shared them with Joe.
Much of my life has been like that photo I spoke of earlier; walking behind my big brother, but pushing something very different. We have led our own lives -- he a lawyer now, me a bartender -- though many of my favorite moments have been when our lives have intersected, when we gambled on Christmas day in Biloxi or when I limped down a finishing chute in Oklahoma and he was there waiting and cheering. I have walked behind him, trying to find my own way at times, trying to be like him at others. I have had a blast so far.
I am lucky that the two best men I know are both in my family, even luckier that I get to call one my brother.
I just hope one day he stops asking me "What's her name again, Emily _____inson?"
Actually, no I don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment