Life With Brothers

I'll go ahead and admit it right now. If it weren't for my brothers, I'd have no clue how to relate to guys. I'd also be much more uptight and organized. But let's face it... they've changed my life. I'd like to give you a little picture of what my life is like.

Note: These are all true incidents. I did not find this list online somewhere. It comes from actual events I have witnessed. In fact, the White-Out one happened yesterday.

White-Out is, in fact, quite permanent, but can be removed from skin with a generous amount of gasoline.

When inserted into a light switch, bobby pins can cause large sparks to appear, but will cause a minimal amount of damage to your person.

Sleeping bags can create large amounts of static electricity when they are ridden down a flight of stairs.

When children are given handcuffs, even play ones, it is wise to keep one of the keys in a safe place. Chances are, you'll need them later, and you'll be glad you kept them.

Do not tie a rope around your waist when jumping off a roof. Your mom will freak out about possible strangulation hazards.

"Magic Erasers" (Thank you Mr. Clean!) can usually remove permanent marker artwork from glass and antique wood. However, walls and carpet are a completely different story.

Even washable markers love flat paint.

Moms don't like silly putty. Carpet does.

Never forget to put flour in your cookie dough. Ever.

Regular table salt will stay in your hair for a while, it sticks to your scalp and can get a little itchy.

When launching water balloons out a second story window using a heavy-duty two-person slingshot, (boy is this fun!) make sure you clear the house of the across-the-street neighbor. That way, even though your mom will be mad, your dad will be so impressed that you'll get off pretty easily.

Stuffed animals placed on the blades of a ceiling fan can fly for long distances. It really is fun, just make sure you secure any breakables within a 30 ft. radius.

If all the kids in your family change places at a restaurant, the waitress really won't appreciate it.

Especially if you repeat the process every 5 minutes.

Don't keep a journal. No matter how often you change the hiding spot, it WILL be found.

If you try hard enough, it is possible to convince certain siblings that a major holiday has been cancelled for the year. Don't do this in front of your parents.

Large stereo systems and cranky neighbors do not mix.

Do not use anything living as a football. Especially a sibling.

"Lifetime" plastic folding tables make great slides, and also make you a walking talking shocking machine. Beware of touching any metal objects for at least 15 minutes.

When using Nerf guns:

Do not shoot your mom while she's talking on the phone. Especially when she's on the phone with your dad.

If you decide to shoot chandeliers, and the bullet sticks, don't worry. It will come down in a few days. Don't bother shooting other bullets at it to knock it off. And don't make a smiley face with the bullets either.

If you lick the bullets to make them stick better, they will leave a smudge mark on glass.

War movies are 10 times better when you can use a Nerf gun to shoot the enemy on the screen.

When having a Nerf gun war, ask younger siblings (the ones that aren't allowed to participate) to spy for you. This will make your enemies mad, so only do it when you have little risk of getting caught.

The bullets that come with the "Sniper" Nerf guns leave a mark on skin even when used from a distance, and at close range, it can be quite painful.

Never aim a Nerf gun at your own face. I have seen many people make this mistake. You never know when it is loaded, and apparently it really hurts when you get shot from 6 inches away. Not only does your face hurt, your pride is severely damaged.

Redundant.

Note: This is a sad story. It isn’t happy and may induce feelings of sympathy and bereavement. Please read only if you don’t mind some cheerless, lugubrious, and slightly morbid fare. Yes, morbid. This is morbid, mournful and morose. It isn’t funny. In fact it’s woebegone; more likely to induce feelings of despair and despondence than delight and ecstasy. Read at your own risk.

Meet Todd. Todd is a boy, who is a male young man. He owns a house, a small, undersized abode with four walls and a ceiling. His home has a floor and a roof. Outside the house is a yard, covered in landscape and small plants for decoration. The yard has a sod lawn with grass planted in it. Todd owns it.

On the side of the house opposite the street is a large, concrete-lined pond filled with chlorinated water. Behind the house is a pool. The pool is full to capacity with cool colorless liquid, treated with chemicals to keep the algae from growing. It is a swimming pool. It is full of water. It is in Todd's backyard.

Around the pool are two chairs for sunbathing. People who want to soak in some rays and collect some ambient Vitamin D may lean back in the plastic furniture and relax. The area around the water is perfect for getting a tan and there are a couple of shays set up for that very purpose. In fact, there are two pool chairs on the deck.

Todd exits his house, ready to swim. He is wearing nothing but a swimsuit, but doesn’t feel self conscious because he knows he is alone. Todd is the only one around and he is wearing appropriate clothes for swimming.

As the owner of the house is about to step into the pull, he slips on the wet tile and knocks his head against the deck. The tile is soaked, aqueous and covered in water. Todd loses his footing and his foot slides against the drenched surface. Just as he is about to get into the pool, he loses his power over gravity and smashes his cranial cavity against the surface he used to be touching with his feet.

Inconclusively, without much evidence and with little data, we can conclude that Todd is knocked out. It’s ambiguous and the information is deficient, but even in the face of such unsatisfactory confirmation, we can infer that the owner of the house is unconscious. Lacking a definitive testimonial, it would be inappropriate to say for certain, but Todd really looks out of it.

A wave brushes up against Todd’s half-submerged body and pulls him toward the water. The wind blows some water up onto the owner of the house and its rebounding movement drags Todd away from the deck. A larger wave pulls Todd all the way into the water. The colorless liquid covers Todd’s face. He falls into the pool.

A large cephalopod enters the water and moves toward Todd. Unnoticed by any, a giant squid squirrels it's way out of the brush by the side of the pool and propels itself toward the unsuspecting human. The animal is a squid and it is moving into the water. Before, the squid was in the water it was next to the pool in a small plant. Now, it is in the water. Nobody asks why a squid would hide by the side of a pool.

The squid strangles Todd. Using every one of its ten arms, the cephalopod asphyxiates his prey until he stops moving. Todd's neck is being covered by ten different suction powered appendages and he can't breathe. Todd loses his breath and ceases his struggles. Todd dies. He kicks the bucket, is bumped off, buys it, cashes it in, chalks out, conks, expires, succumbs, pushes up the daisies, harfs it, folds, mucks, goes KIA, keeps the headstone company, captains the dirt submarine, visits the in-laws, communes with nature, renders unto Caesar, goes back for seconds, calls home in the horizontal phone booth, catches some shut-eye, gets off the train, hunts for buried treasure, meets the gophers, tucks in for the night, holes up, cools off, gets front row seating at the funeral, goes all in, tests the dirt with both feet, gets busted cheating death, wumps, sproinks, dingalings, taps out, busts, finishes last, gets in a time capsule, hides from Chuck Norris, gets his last change of address, and, yes, drowns.

Posthumously, after his death and when he is no longer alive, Todd’s friends cry for him. They shed tears about the life he led and the tragic nature of his demise. His passing was sad and they mourn his loss. Todd’s friends are bereaved.

At Todd’s funeral, a man in a suit talks about the importance of never swimming alone. While they put his body into the ground, an expert in pool maintenance and safety advises others to learn from Todd’s mistake. Todd gave his life to tell a lesson and we should all pay attention to that lesson. Everyone is wearing black and, while tears are shed and memories shared, a water virtuoso warns others of the danger of pools and squids. They are not safe, so always bring someone along to help you if you have a problem. Always, always, always!

Moral: Never swim alone without other people around to accompany you unless you have supervision.

My deceptive water bottle

It was the second hour of French class and I was getting pretty thirsty. The professor was droning on about stress accents and the tails of Cs when my wandering eye caught the cap of the water bottle stuck in my backpack. Excellent! I reached under the desk, pulled open the container and chugged a couple comforting swigs. The lecture didn’t get any more interesting, but at least I wasn’t parched anymore.

I kept the water bottle on my desk in case the thirsts decided to attack again and once again pretended to listen. That’s when it hit me: I was a victim of false advertising! I know, I know, that doesn’t make any sense. But it will. Keep reading.

Below is a picture of the bottle from which I drank in the first paragraph:



It looks really normal, doesn’t it? “The kind of water that tastes like water” as they say on the TV. Looks can be deceiving. This particular bottle is actually none of those; it is just Safeway’s generic “Refreshe” brand and nothing fancy. Either the typist who wrote out the label was new or French, because refresh is not spelled with an “e.”

My sensibilities were comforted by this label on the side of the bottle:



I’d had pizza and a diet soda for lunch (both high in salt) so the fact that the bottle didn’t have any sodium was comforting. I smiled inwardly. Then my eyes wandered to the opposite side of the water label where I saw:



“Cody, ça vas?” My teacher had a concerned expression on her face as she looked at me from the front of the class. In my horror, I had probably done something ungentlemanly. “Oui, ça vas bien.” Then my brain went on auto pilot. “Et vous? Comment allez-vous?” Sodium Bicarbonate! SODIUM Bicarbonate which adds an “insignificant” amount of sodium! Whatever happened to that “Sodium Free” label with the heart? I almost coughed up the water right then. What a blatant act of deception! Anyone who cares about their health could take the time to flip the bottle over and find out what was really going on.

My curiosity piqued, I turned the bottle and began scrutinizing the label for other inconsistencies.



Some people might find this comforting. But for me, in my deception induced heightened state of alert, this was a clue. And an oxymoron. How in the world is osmosis reversed? We learn in biology that osmosis refers to the act of any liquid going down the concentration gradient (like water down a hill, only different). Without some serious magic or technology, it is impossible to reverse that. And the reversal is never natural.

My teacher interrupted my line of thinking to ask me a question. I mumbled out an answer that I and the rest of the class forgot almost as soon as it was uttered and returned to my aqua thoughts.

The front of the bottle advertised that the water was filtered using a microfilter (just below the sodium free notification and two pictures up in case you forgot). In my book, water cannot be both microfiltered and reversed osmosised. It’s impossible. They must have mixed up the bottles somewhere down the line.

I sighed and leaned back in my seat. No one paid any attention (At this point in the semester, I could come to class wearing a speedo and no one would bat an eyelash; there is one guy who might, but for the most part, no one would care.) and I rusticated in my disappointment. I had purchased this bottle of water as part of a thirty count case a week ago and I could think of no way to legally express my disappointment in a manner that would effectively relieve the stress. Then I saw it:



The bottle still contained a third of its original contents and I knew the Safeway where I’d bought it. All I would need to do was run down and get it replaced. I was antsy until class ended and I raced down the stairwell, fully intending to cross the street and return the bottle. That’s when another attack of the thirsts hit. And I stopped. Desperate, I looked to the deceptive bottle for quenching liquid. Before I could think through the consequences of my action I had swallowed the last drop, reverse osmosis, sodium bicarbonate, money back guarantee and all.

The worst part about this story is that I was back in Safeway yesterday. And I purchased another 30 count package. Hey, it was the cheapest there.