That was said after a big comeback by Michigan in 2007. It was the last time Michigan beat Michigan State at Spartan Stadium. Michigan has only beaten Michigan State one time since then. And no... they didn't beat them yesterday.
And while it might prove helpful for me to talk about my love of Michigan football and the agonizing repeated defeats to our 'little brothers' in East Lansing... I'm here to talk about MY little Brother. B.
Yup, this is the next installment of my family story where I talk about family members. I previously talked about R my Big Brother. B, my little brother, is an all together different story.
I've heard it said that the eldest sibling has it the hardest. They get all the 'mistakes' from the parents, while the youngest sibling gets the whole 'Oh I don't care' attitude from their parents. Well, that's just no the case with my brothers and I. My parents were fairly even handed in our upbringings. There weren't a lot of hard and true rules. Grades in school were considered important, and if we got a D or less in a class we were grounded until that grade got raised. We had a curfue that extended each year until we graduated high school. Come home late, and get 'going out' privileges revoked for awhile.
Most of the rules from my parents were far more nebulous. 'Be Respectful', 'Be Nice', 'Eyes and Ears mostly open. Mouth mostly shut'. Stuff like that.
All three of us were good at following the less than defined rules. We got the gist of them and went along. The hard rules though... well R disobeyed the curfew many times. It felt like he couldn't go out on most weekdays, but got into Mom and Dad's good graces in time to blow the curfew back up on the weekend. I got caught late twice... once because I wanted to finish watching an episode of 'Quantum Leap' at a friends house, and another time because I ran out of gas. B never really had to worry about the curfew... more on that in a bit.
R got grounded once for grades, but more or less remained at a B average. I never got grounded as I never got a D or less. B... well B was grounded for about three years in High School. My parents were so strict on this grade rule that when B got a D on his final report card in the 10th grade, he was grounded over the summer. THE WHOLE SUMMER!
I think it's that fact that made B into the man that he is today. Where R and I both struggled in the transition from boyhood to manhood, B more or less ran away from home after high school. He refused to live under Mom and Dad's roof after being so 'mistreated' for his entire high school career.
Now, to be clear, he didn't "run away". Mom and Dad always made it clear that once we turned 18, and graduated from High School, we were our own people. Yes, there were rules in the house if we decided to continue living there (clean up after ourselves, be respectful when coming home late, help care for the house...), but we didn't have any hard and fast rules.
After B graduated from High School, he took a summer job at a nearby amusement park. Yes, it's kind of like he ran away to the circus. He didn't make it there the entire summer as it really was a crap job. When he came back home he lived with Mom and Dad for a few months before moving out into his own apartment. He shared the apartment with his then girlfriend, so working at a fast food place was enough money. He worked his way up from crew manager, to crew lead, to assistant manager, to finally becoming a store manager.
Life was good for B. He was his own man, out on his own. He married his girlfriend, and was a star at work. The franchise owner moved him from problem location to problem location as my brother had a nack of cleaning up the place. He had no qualms of firing employees that weren't doing their job, and promoting people that either excelled or showed promise in managerial positions.
Eventually they had their first child and decided that the apartment was no place to bring up their young one. Instead of buying or even renting a home though, they decided to buy a mobile home. A trailer. They had another child, and life was going well. Financially they were doing... well they were doing OK. Yes, B was making far more money than R or I were. He had a decent benefits package and almost more importantly he was able to help out the greater family. He hired R for awhile as a maintenance man at one of his locations. He even hired Dad after Dad retired for part time work as a maintenance man. He hired his wife, and his mother in law.
A lot of that came tumbling down a few years later. I'd guess this was about 2003. He quit and/or was fired from his management job. He had been passed over in becoming a 'regional manager', and the person who got the job treated B like shit. The owner of the franchise backed up his regional manager and all the good that B had done for the company went down the drain.
It was a hard time for B. The house of cards he had built almost crashed around his head. Was he making decent money? Yes. Did he have any savings? No. Thankfully it only took him about a month to get another managerial job. This time it was at a company that provided laundry services to other companies. B managed a team of delivery men that also acted as salesmen. Again, he was good at the job. It paid more than he was making at the fast food chain and had a better benefits package. He was even able to hire one of his friends as a driver/salesman.
They had another child. The trailer was starting to get crowded.
But here's the rub... the trailer was the worst possible choice he could have made. He had a mortgage payment on a trailer that had lost almost all of its value. Plus each month he had to pay rent in the trialer park. Getting out of the trailer was neigh impossible. He'd have to eat the remaining part of his mortage as no one would pay what he owed on it. And if the trailer DID sell, the trailer park wouldn't allow it to remain on their lot. While B was grandfathered in, the park had a rule stating that all trailers had to be 'double wide'.
So B doubled down on the bad choice and abandoned it. He rented a house and moved out of the trailer. He then called both the trailer park and the mortgage company and told them to sit and spin.
The rented house is nice. He's even hosted several of our family holiday gatherings. But with his credit and the fact that he directly screwed over a mortgage company it's doubtfull that he'll be able to get a mortgage for his own home any time soon.
Eventually B lost his job. I'm still not certain exactly what happened, as B didn't even tell anybody outside of his own family for a couple months. And even then the only reason that he told Mom (Dad had since passed away) was because he had eaten away all of his meager savings. This time the job loss lasted longer. He eventually got hired on at the retail store that R and I would eventually work at, but it was a shit job with no future. He quit and got into a local indian casino as a card dealer.
That's his current job. It pays well enough, but he only works there part time. The real bread winner of his family is my sister in law. She works at a local factory. The base pay isn't a lot, but through all of the overtime she gets (I'd guess she works on average about 60 hours a week), she make a pretty penny. The overtime is the reason B only works part time... someone has to be home and a parent to their children.
So that's B's history. His attitude is... well I consider it odd. For all the hatred he had of Mom and Dad's "rules", he rules his children with an iron fist. About the only thing he doesn't ground them for is grades (not surprisingly his two boys aren't doing all that well in school). I don't mind someone having a firm hand with their children... I believe it can lead to children growing up to be respectful adults. But B isn't even handed. His punishments can come out of nowhere. They can be anywhere from mild, to harsh. They can be for minor infractions of stated rules or any infraction of some previously unstated rule.
Worse for the children is that their mother (my sister in law) has an almost lackadaisical rule over them. She never punishes them. She never disciplines them. When she says 'No' to some request, its only a matter of time before she changes it to either 'Yes' or 'Go ask your father'. So one parent is a push over, while the other is a mad dictator. Yeah... my niece and nephews are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Attitude wise, my brother is fairly arrogant. What he does is right, just and correct. If someone disagrees with them they are stupid, uninformed, and just not a very good person. And maybe worse than that, all good things come FROM him.
A specific example is his last two vehicles. At one time many years ago he was dead set on buying a Pontiac Bonneville. Specifically the SSEi version. If you don't know about that car, it was more or less a luxury car with a Pontiac logo instead of a Buick or Cadillac emblem on it. It was also supercharged, so in a way it was a sports sedan. But you paid a damned pretty penny for the car. And worse yet, it had been discontinued... even Pontiac said it wasn't good enough at it's price to continue making it.
But B had his mind set and was searching all the local dealers for a low mileage slightly used version. At one point I went out with him to look at a particularly good one. Now I'm no car expert... but I DO keep up with cars. I knew that most of the features that B was after were available in the newly redesigned Chevy Impala. That the Impala had a similar engine and more space. That a new Impala with full warranty went for less than a used Bonnie with only a part of its warranty remaining. And that the new Impala actually had options that weren't available on the Bonneville
Now if I sat down and talked B through these points, he'd simply disagree and go after a Bonneville without my help. So instead I had to be sneaky about it. I made sure that we looked at a used Bonneville for sale at a Chevy dealership. I made sure that we parked next to all the new Impalas. When we found the Bonneville, I made sure to wait for him to 'tell me' about all it's features and mention each time that those were also available on other cars. If I remember right, the Bonneville had a roughly $25,000 sticker price. When we went back to his car, I told him I wanted to check out the new Impala. Not for him... for me. I was 'amazed' to find out that all the same features he was looking at were available on this brand new, top of the line Impala (the LTZ version)... for only two thousand more.
He laughed it off wondering aloud why I'd be interested in a Chevy over a Pontiac for more money. That's when I went in for the jugular. I pointed out that it had a full warranty, was newer, had 8 miles on it (as opposed to the 15,000 or so miles on the Bonnie).... and that with dealer incentives it would actually be LESS money than the Pontiac.
I knew he couldn't admit that it was a far better buy. So we drove off and looked at a few other Bonnevilles. I had done my job and got the information into his thinking process. Two weeks later he was the VERY proud owner of a brand new Chevy Impala LTZ in lazer blue (I still had to chide him and called it purple... even to the point that I named his car Barney).
Whenever he talked about how he selected the Impala though, it was as though he found out about it through his own research. He'd talk about how it had all the options he wanted out of the Pontiac and that it cost less money. I was never mentioned.
Years later when he was looking to replace his Impala he had his sights on a Dodge Charger. Same options, bigger engine, more 'cool'. It actually had a little less space than his current Impala and that just struck me as odd... he had three growing children that barely fit into his sedan. I know that no man ever wants to admit that they now own a van... but damn it, he needed a van for his family.
I thought that maybe he had matured enough to have a conversation about it, but he wouldn't even listen to me. Once the dreaded V word came out of my mouth, the conversation was over. It didn't matter that I could point out things like price, features, warranty and most of all space... he just wasn't going to listen.
So I had to get sneaky again. I dropped by the local Chevy dealership and picked up a brochure on their new vehicle... the Traverse. This vehicle is a van without the sliding door(s). It's huge with space for his entire family and more. It's not nearly as 'cool' as a Charger, but I made sure to flag the page that showed the 20 inch wheels. Yes... 20 inch wheels was a selling point for my brother. I left the brochure at my brother's place and talked to him about it the next week. He was in love.
The only problem that I was setting him in to get a nicely equiped Traverse for around $35,000. Instead he went whole hog and got just about every damned option for over $50,000.
Fifty Fucking Thousand Dollars!
He blew up both his monthly car payment as well as his insurance premiums. But hey... he could have easily spent more on a Charger. At least now he has a family vehicle.
But even now... he tells everybody about how he decided forgo a 'cool car' and get a food family vehicle instead. How it just made sense. No mention of me at all.
Those are just two examples of B believing that anything and everything 'good' in his life is directly from his own experience and his domain. He's just as adamant on everything 'bad' in his life being somebody or something elses fault. It's not his arrogance that got him out of the fast food place. It's not his attitude that got him out of the laundry job. It wasn't his fault that the trailer proved to be a bad choice.
Like R, I find myself pointing out B's faults. But I do love him. He is fiercely loyal to his family. Both his children and wife along with his brothers and his mother. He will be there to help in any way possible. I recently moved all of my 'stuff' from a storage unit I was renting to his basement. He wouldn't even let me talk about paying him for it. He was magnanimous in offering the space (I guess he forgot that I had asked about the extra space in his basement about six months before).
He's probably the most 'different' out of my brothers and I. R is like dad without the gregarious nature (remember... he's always grumpy). I'm a lot like Mom. All four of us are comfortable with what we have, but are always open to 'new' things. Things like Netflix, a different type of vehicle, new programs on the computer, new smart phones, lateral moves at work that might offer more future opportunities, eating healthy, exercising, recycling. These are all things that B just doesn't think about.
I love B. He's my Little Brother.
And much as R would get a kick out of calling him my Big Brother, B would get a kick out of calling him my Little Brother. Since High School, I was the 'fat' brother. I weight in at 220lb upon graduation while R was a svelte 160lb and B was a tiny 140lb. I'm certainly not a lightweight or even appropriately measured man at my current 270lb (still obese and only a few pounds from morbidly obese). But B caught up to me in a bad way. He's a good two inches shorter than me, and although he never talks about his specific weight, I'd guess he tops the scale at a good 300lb. Yeah... he stopped kidding me about my weight several years ago.
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