There I stood at Target in front of the gummy snacks trying to make a Very Important Decision: which particular variety to get for Joey this next week. Everyone knows they all basically taste the same, the key is which cartoon character or superhero to pick. And this week, I was feeling mischievous and trying to decide between Disney Princesses, Hello Kitty, My Little Pony and Barbie.
Obviously this was not a decision I could make on my own. But fortunately I had my cell phone on me.
I whipped it out, hit 8 on speed-dial and was almost instantly connected to...The Kid!
"Man, I can't decide which gummy snacks to get for Joey. Pick one for me."
"OKFINE," he said, all irritated-like. (I call him for "advice" all the time.) "What are my options."
I listed them and as soon as I was done he immediately said, "Disney Princesses. All the way."
"Thanks, man." I said.
"No problem."
"OKFINEBYE," we said to each other and, just like that, my decision was made. All it took was an 8 second conversation with The Kid.
Vital Statistics
Relationship to me: Youngest and most problematic brotherRelative age: 18
Date of Birth: November 2, no clue what year
Most annoying habit: Couldn't say, he's got tons
College: Cedarville University
Current major: Something about Engineering and Software, I think
Current location : Ohio
Number of Sisters: Two. And we're both awesome
Number of Brothers: One
Number of pets : Ernie, of course
Number of Wanna-be siblings: Three (one for each sibling who is married)
Childhood imaginary friends: Chad and Delock
Overall co-dependency on me (Jenna): Barely any at all
My overall co-dependency on The Kid: Probably a lot more than necessary
Current Aliases: The Kid, Majesty, My Liege, Coolguy, Little Man
Favorite color: Royal Blue (because of all his Majesty)
Favorite candy: milk chocolate, nerds or peppermint patties (but all those things hurt his teeth)
Favorite snack: string cheese
Favorite birthday meal: Tenderloin steak with honey sweet rolls made by Mom
Favorite coloring picture: The Little Mermaid one I sent him a couple weeks ago with me as the mermaid and him as the lobster
He's got mad skills at: Ultimate Frisbee, Ping Pong, kicking bum and being awesome
Most annoying thing I've mailed him since he's been in college: A Mr. Bump bath mitt which he staunchly refuses to use. Loser.
See, the thing about The Kid is that he was pretty much my scourge until I got old enough to realize that he was probably the coolest member of the family, Pops notwithstanding. The primary reason for my annoyance at The Kid was this little hand game that he and Andrew made up called "Nutkin". (For some reason I never despised Andrew as much for Nutkin as I did The Kid, not really sure why not.) I hate Nutkin, it was these little squeaky finger characters that all three other siblings would play ad nauseum on long car trips. They had a whole collection of them. There was Nutkin and Squeakers and Bouncers, etc. So imagine being 12 years old and listening to...well, I can't even type it out, but listening to three other younger people making high-pitched squeaking sounds and slamming their little hand characters into each other for hours and hours in a van...it was enough to drive anyone crazy.
I tried to be a joiner a couple of times and play Nutkin, but I never could squeak quite right and, frankly, I thought it was boring. Plus The Kid was a total dictator and made up the story as they went along. Since I hate to be told what to do, especially by pipsqueaks 6 years younger than myself, I never took to it.
I think that an epiphany regarding The Kid's Coolness Potential occurred somewhere around my 17th year when I purchased the J2K (my first car; so named because it was $2,000, I purchased it in Y2K and my first initial happens to be "J"). I could now drive him places and we could listen to the radio really loud and sing along with songs that Mom probably does not appreciate me exposing the poor innocent Kid to. (He's making me a CD of the old J2K Jams right now, actually.)
In any case, I was still 25% uncool to The Kid up until my sophomore year of college. After that it's been pretty uphill for The Kid. He gets whatever he wants and I color him pictures in my spare time. We go on Krispy Kreme raids when there's one nearby and Mom's close enough to be "disappointed" in our sugar consumption.
Fortunately for me, The Kid has an affinity for Joey. So what used to be just The Kid and I running around making mischief has turned into The Kid, Joey and I running around making mischief. It is infinitely more dangeresque.
Unfortunately for The Kid, I have developed a certain affinity for calling him:
a.) whenever I do something bad
b.) whenever I'm about to do something bad
c.) whenever something bad happens to me
d.) when I need advice on whether to get a soda or candy
e.) when I need advice about what kind of present to buy for Joey
This means that The Kid gets a lot of phone calls from me. Probably more than is healthy.
So that, in a nutshell, is who The Kid is: he's my baby brother who is abnormally cool.
JW <3 TK
3 comments:
Do you three have a cool theme song?
Dangeresque2 coming out soon??
Dude, I was totally born in 1988! Also, you guys call me Little Man, at least Ashley does. Thirdly, I also kick booty and Ping Pong.
I can't believe the kid got credit for creating Nutkin. Yah he dictated the whole thing, but that was AFTER it's inception, which was by me. Here is the true story of the founding of Nutkin.
It was a sunny day in the green house and Alex and I were bored in the family room. The sun was shinning through the window and casting a beam of warm sunlight on the egg shell white colored wall.
I decided it would be fun to make hand shadows on the wall and placed my hands as best I could into the shape of a bunny. I had Alex find some random object he could hold up to represent a nut that the bunny was trying to eat (I'm not sure if bunnies actually eat nuts, but so the story goes).
Alex and I played at this for quite some time, but then decided that we were being limited in our creativity by the fact that the sun was going down and we had to stay by the wall, so we ditched the hand shadows and interacted with each other's hands themselves (a simply brilliant move on my part).
When asked what the creature was called we were playing with, the obvious answer was Nutkin, and there transpired hours of entertainment and annoyance for the Laird siblings.
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