Brothers...

Joey met me for lunch today. He loves Freebirds and that's what we were having, so he got over here as quickly as he could and stood in line literally buzzing with excitement that he was getting to have Freebirds and not pay for it .

I, unfortunately, am totally over the free Freebirds thing.

We sat in a conference room watching the worker-men construct a new high-rise across the street. Joey had to field questions from me like, "How do they get the cement to dry in the air like that? How does it not ooze through and make a big pile on the ground? Why is the whole high-rise not just one huge pile of cement and wires on the ground?" and "How do those guys get up there in the first place?"

(The answers were: "The cement is very thick; they use molds" and "They climb", respectively.)

Then I asked how they got the molds off once they cement hardened onto them. It seems to me like the molds would become one with the cement, thus making it kind of pointless to have bothered with molds in the first place.

Poor, poor Joey.

After I got tired of asking questions about construction and we'd finished up our chips, we began talking about baby names. (No, we're not having a baby. But friends of ours are - CONGRATULATIONS!!!! - and so we talk about baby stuff a lot more than normal now. However, we're still not having a baby.)

Somehow we got onto the subject of dolls. My childhood dolls, unfortunately, are a rather sore subject for me; I think Joey was trying to rile me up.

I had three beautiful dolls from my childhood that I was saving for my own daughters someday. (I played with dolls until I was 13, thank you very much.) Their names were Melanie, Elizabeth and Marna. (Marna was a Cabbage Patch doll and so she came with an ugly name. I got to name Melanie and Elizabeth myself because they were Magic Nursery.)

When I grew out of playing with them I put them in a box in the storage room with the rest of my doll things. Several years ago, in the middle of college, I thought it would be fun to get out my three good friends and look at them.

I went to the box. I opened it up. I picked up Marna and...

"MOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!" I yelled.

I grabbed my three dolls and stormed upstairs.

"Mom, the boys must have gotten into my dolls while I was at college or something." I said, depositing them on the kitchen table.

My three favorite dolls had numerous nail holes through their eyes, ears, nose, mouth and the tops of their heads. There were also pencil makings on their faces.

(Stop laughing. It really isn't funny.)

I don't think the boys ever got punished. I can think of lots of terrible things to do to them.

And so, as we were sitting together eating lunch today Joey dipped his chip in the last of his queso and said, "You should get some little boy dolls, name one after each of your brothers and pound nails into their eyes."

"Oooh," I said, "That's a great idea. I still never got them back for that. Do you think Goodwill has boy dolls?"

"We'll have to check." Joey replied.

And I think we will.

So, Brothers, just you watch out. You think you got away with ruining my favorite dolls...you think I've forgotten all about it...but just you wait. I'll melt all your Legos or break off all the connectors for the wooden train tracks or...something. But it'll be good whatever it is.