Putting On My Game Face
There are some sweet advantages to having my own column.
When I was a kid and managed to beat my brother at something, the only way I could advertise my superiority over him was by word of mouth, which was time-consuming and exhausting (considering I had to do it so often).
Now, however, just by tapping away at my computer, I’m able to share his shame with thousands.
Yes, the mighty has fallen. My brother Kurt, self-proclaimed Monopoly champ extraordinaire, has succumbed to the wiles of his baby sister.
We don’t get to see as much of my brother and his family since he transferred from BF Goodrich Aerospace near Lewisburg, W.Va., to North Canton, Ohio, a few years ago. This year, scheduling conflicts prevented us from spending Christmas together until several days later, when we met at our folks’ house to swap gifts and, well, rekindle the ol’ sibling rivalry.
Born just 14 months apart, Kurt and I have always been competitive in the way only siblings and the archest of enemies can be. He was older, bigger, stronger and had better hair. His teeth were perfectly straight and impervious to cavities, while mine overlapped and resembled Swiss cheese. From earliest childhood to the present, Kurt can somehow manage to be guilty as sin, yet look innocent as a lamb, while I–genuinely lamblike–often exude a Clinton-like air. It doesn’t matter that I never inhaled. I look like I did.
It was almost as though, when physical, character and skill traits were doled out, there was only one of each to divide between us. He got math. I got English. He took outgoing. Left me with shy. He has a nose a pelican could comfortably perch on. Only lesser seabirds could take roost on mine.
So I suppose it was natural that two such total opposites would compete at regular intervals to see which would end up owning a particular thing.
Like Monopoly.
‘Twas his. Now mine.
Our battle, which started at nine and lasted until midnight, included Kurt’s early evening boasting that he’d once beaten the No. 4-ranked Monopoly player in the U.S. I took his children down, too. First Madeline, 10, then Zachary, 13, then finally–after Kurt–came 14-year-old Tori, a shrewd and competent player. (She takes after her aunt.)
And so I sit here at my keyboard, delighting in my victory, feeling the tally has been evened a bit, that I’ve managed to wipe from the sibling scoreboard one of those times when he wrapped hair around the head of my toothbrush or filled the earpiece of my phone with Vaseline.
I was discussing the cruelty of siblings with my friend Pam, who has a delightfully wicked older sister, Mary Jo. A few months back, Pam and Mary Jo were talking about some of the toys they’d had as children, and Pam admitted to an irrational fear she’d once had of one of Mary Jo’s dolls.
“It had the absolute scariest expression on its face,” said Pam. “I used to hide it all the time so I wouldn’t have to look at it.”
Mary Jo, who lives quite a distance away, tracked down that old doll, then drove all the way to Pam’s house and positioned the doll just so on a windowsill outside Pam’s bathroom window. That night, when Pam went to the bathroom to brush her teeth just before bed, she looked in the mirror and saw the reflection of the doll peeking in.
It seems some siblings have a monopoly on mischief.
