Blast from The Past

Practical jokes would pop up without warning, bizarre nicknames and lewd comments would fly like bullets whenever my brother and I were in the same room. I would seemingly get mad, but secretly crack up at his well-crafted insults. My parents would watch us go back and forth, in despair. "When are you two going to grow up?" they would lament. Ignoring their anguish, we'd continue commenting full speed about which one of us was more intelligent, ridiculous, or annoying. He'd test how bad his socks smelled pushing them up my nose, pour salt in my coffee while I looked elsewhere and pretend to have mono when I asked him to do the smallest thing for me.

His recent stay at my apartment proved that our relationship took a different turn. We watched a couple of movies together, went out several times to restaurants, met up with his friends and had a pretty decent time. I told him to please try to be neat, he said he would consider. He said he was getting hungry, we cooked a meal together. He fell asleep on the couch, I made his bed. I dropped off the laundry, he picked it up. After 25 years of tic-tac-toe, we were finally in sync but also very boring.

I offered him a guest spot on my "sitepal." After some mild resistence, three recordings mixed with giggles and one cell phone ring disrupting our childish fun, we loaded up what you see on the upper-right hand side this week. Of course, the phrase he's trying to teach my visitors is slang and offensive, but it's still comforting to hear that he hasn't lost his edge.