| I
have, at last official count, seventeen brothers and sisters
-- counting all the steps and halfs and the like. Something
like that. I’m no good with numbers, quite honestly.
Or sports. Have you ever seen me try to dribble a basketball?
Good goddamn. Der… Where was I? … Oh yeah, being
a big brother. See, I have a younger bro and sis, an even
younger step-bro and step-sis, some three stepbrothers I don’t
know from Adam, and an older half-bro. Them’s a lot
of siblings, no? And sometimes I get a’ thinking, when
talking to the younger ones, that maybe I haven’t been
the best big bruddah ever. Like, whenever I’m chatting
it up with my younger (by only a year and a half) brother
Patrick, and I totally go fishing for compliments on my older
brotherness… he never seems to take the bait. We’re
pretty decent friends, but I don’t think I nailed the
older brother thing. And my younger sis, Kelly Sue? She’s
a nice lady, but I wish I knew her better. Truth is, I don’t
feel I gave her or P that mix of friend, older-person-to-look-up-to
and tormentor type stuff that a big bro is supposed to impart
on the younger members of the litter. Regarding this conundrum,
I Ponder:
What to do? What… to… do…?
That’s when I remembered those Denzel Washington commercials
from yesteryear about becoming a Big Brother or Sister to
some needy kid. I doubted I had much of a chance at the “Big
Sister ”gig, but I figured I’d be a shoo-in for
a Big Brother spot! This could be a way for me to do all the
big bro stuff I neglected with my own siblings! I would finally
right a wrong! Totally stoked, I called the local Big Brother
and Big Sister office…
Buzz kill.
There were all sots of forms and interviews and urine tests
and… fuck it; put it in a bucket (like my grandma always
says). I really, really wanted to try my hand at being a proper
older brother, though… but who would be my new younger
sibling? I mean, Patrick and Kelly are twenty-six and twenty-one
respectively. After searching my heart (and finding no suitable
latter-day stand-ins for this new experiment in big brotherdom),
I figured I’d give them another shot. Or, rather, I
would humbly ask them to give me another
shot. It was gonna be even more difficult due to the fact
that I now live 2,400 miles away, but to my sleep-deprived,
TV-addled mind, it was a challenge worth attempting. Being
inherently lazy, I started with an email…
TO:
Patrick, Kelly
FROM: Deej
SUBJECT: What up?
Hey P & Kel. What up? So, uh… wanna go to the batting
cages or something? Real sibling type stuff? Lemme know.
Totally your big brother,
d.j.
Not soon after, I got a reply from Kelly…
TO:
D.J.
CC: Patrick
FROM: Kelly
SUBJECT: Re: What up?
What the hell, D.J.? You live in California. We’re in
Ohio. And we don’t even like baseball. Neither do you.
Are you okay? Mentally, I mean? Have you run out of your meds
again?
Oh, Mom wants to know if you’ve gotten a real job yet
or if you’re still doing that temp thing. Didn’t
you want to be a writer? What are you doing at some office
job, anyway? Have you given up on your dreams?
Love,
Kelly
To this I -- perhaps hastily -- shot off a heated email back
to my little sister:
 TO:
Kelly
FROM: Deej
SUBJECT: Re: Re: What up?
What the fuck, Kelly??? You think I’m a failure just
because I’m a… failure?????? Who are you to judge???
And if not the batting cages… why not, like, an arcade
or some shit? I dunno… That was rude, dude. The whole
“giving up dreams ”thing. Harsh, yo.
I still love you, though,
d.j. (the awesomest big brother EVER)
Her response was direct at best, hurtful at worst:
TO: D.J.
FROM: Kelly
SUBJECT: Re: Re: Re: What up?
Calm down, weirdo. Geez. Are you still taking your meds? Mom
really wants to know. She thinks you might need a higher dosage.
Anyway, I have to go to something else now.
--Kelly
After that brutal exchange, I realized that I never heard
back from Patrick at all. Kind of a bummer, but at least he
didn’t call me out on being a conformist failure. Regardless,
I decided that maybe going to the batting cages was not the
type of outing for my particular siblings. What else? I decided
to call the elusive Patrick. He wasn’t home, so I left
a message…
“Hey P, Wanna… I dunno… get ice cream
or roughhouse or something? Maybe we could set off firecrackers
or fork someone’s lawn. You know, like, stick forks…
in someone’s lawn? Uh… whatever… shit. …
Um… Call me back and lemme know… Oh. This is D.J.”
I have yet to hear from Patrick, and Kelly’s no longer
returning my emails after I got all heated up about the failure
thing; but I know that, if given the chance, I could be a
totally kickass big brother. No more self-absorbed, neglectful
shit. I’d rent R-Rated movies for them (So what if they’re
old enough to get them now themselves? It’s the gesture.),
buy them ice cream, take ‘em to the skating rink. I’ll
be the absolutely awesome big bro I should’ve been when
we were younger. If Denzel can do it, so can I. That also
goes for starring in flicks like Training Day, as
well. I totally could’ve abused Ethan Hawke and won
an Oscar, inspiring black people everywhere by being the first
black man to win an Best Actor Oscar since Sidney Poitier
-- just like Denzel did a couple years ago. No doubt.
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