Siblings and Summarizing

      I think I made Sam out to be a racist last week with the fried chicken comment. That's not good... or correct. I guess that's what happens when I write when I'm sick. Actually, that's a good idea. As a code for my readers that I'm writing the post while fighting some form of illness, which actually happens pretty often, I will randomly drop somewhere in the text a hint that Sam is a white supremacist. It'll be an inside joke! We don't have one of those, readers. It's about time we get one.

     I am however feeling dandy this week, and I'm excited to write with a zeal that only a healthy body and mind can produce. Also, a good three cups of coffee this morning helps to the point of near hindrance, and I can only assume that this post is top notch stuff, as my eyes haven't stopped jittering long enough for me to read what I've written. Ah well. Editing is an unnecessary step, and can honestly be skiped altogether.

     I brought my brother to the list of people I talk about last week, and I realize now that my family is a rather large majority of my memories, as they tended to be around a lot while creating them. So, if I didn't talk about them once in a while, it would be a major disservice to my readers, to whom I'm allowing a glimpse into my life, where my family is both half of that and half of my readers. And I'd also be doing a disservice to myself, who is in a constant need of things to write about. By bringing up my family, I just postponed the end of this project by at least a couple years.

     I would like to bring up two things before I get too carried away. One: That all the paragraphs so far start with “I”, which would usually make me think that I'm failing at sentence variation, but I'm leaving it there as both a curiosity and a warning to future paragraphs that uniformity is not for them, and that they should branch out and start the way that they should: Differently. I think I just used two colons in the same sentence... I double-coloned. Is that a thing? It is now. Wait. No. Never mind. It's not. I should really lay off on the coffee...

     The second thing I'd like to bring up is that I apologize to the quartet fans who read this for Cory, Ben and Spencer, or Corbence, as I am now calling them while they are being acknowledged in a group. I would like to think that I'm in something of an introduction phase in my blog, and during that phase, I'm trying to bring up the people that I will be writing about while the project is young, rather than wait a couple months and say “Hey! I have a family!” and write about them for the next half-year. This approach allows for variation between stories, and makes it so that I'm not limited to the same characters week after week. Now that I'm done explaining myself to the likes of you, it's time to introduce the family.

     Over a span of time, I've given a pretty accurate title to each of my siblings, that I feel describes them in a short and easy-to-understand way. For example, we have the eldest, Jesse: the Perfect One. Every single time I've called Jesse “the Perfect One” he has denied it. And you know what? That's exactly what a perfect person would do. So if anything, he has proven my point. How is he perfect? Well, he's an intelligent and thoughtful track star with a great sense of humor, who is a terrific father, and a loving husband, who is handy with tools, handier with a computer, slow to anger, quiet (but not in a shy sort of way, more like a “I'm too cool to be loud” sort of way), and also has perfect hair. He calls it combing. I call it straight up witchcraft. Anyways, we have a smart, athletic, funny, and loving handy man, who is calm and collected, and has the wavy hair of Prince Charming. This is perfection personified. But he won't have it, so let's move on.

     Next we have Rachel: the Cool One. Sam actually helped a bit with that title, but it's true. Out of the five of us, Rachel is by far the coolest one. Say Sam and I discovered a band that's really underground (because yes, we're basically hipsters), Rachel will be like “Oh, I love that band! Although their second album was sub par.” Sam and I had yet to discover that the band even had a second album. But besides her being more hipster than Sam and I, she went to school for photography, out of state I might add, and she went to Australia for a while and survived. That's basically as cool as our family gets.

     Then we have Sarah: the Sarcastic One. I think the only actual rivalry in our immediate family was between Sarah and I, and a lot of that is because we were also the only ones who were actually somewhat alike. Now that might not make sense, even though it totally should. A sarcastic teenager is probably going to be annoyed by a sarcastic eight-year-old, who is doing his best to annoy the teenager. The annoyed teenager will complain to the tired parent, who then punishes the eight-year-old to shut up the annoy(ed)(ing) teenager. Then the eight-year-old punishes the teenager for getting him in trouble by annoying her. And the circle of life continues... But again, we outgrew that, and now Sarah is a loving wife and mother, and will soon have her turn at being the tired parent, with her unavoidably sarcastic children.

     After Sarah, there's Sam: the Favorite One. And not just by me. By everyone. If you spend five minutes with Sam, he will become your favorite person. Seriously, the whole family agrees. Sam is the favorite. And we're okay with that. My Best Man speech for Sam's wedding was basically me talking about how he was all our favorite person. And everyone there agreed too. Is he perfect? No, that's Jesse, remember? No, Sam is just a guy you immediately love to be around. Unless he's being Apple Sam. Never be around Apple Sam.

     Lastly, there's me: the New One. I have a far enough age difference from the rest of my siblings that Sam was really the only one I could hang out with regularly. Most were past college and starting a family of their own by the time I hit high school, so I never really had a chance to get to know them before I lost my “annoying younger brother” attitude. High School was really when I started hanging out with Sam the most, and I think during that time, he was almost getting me ready to meet my older siblings, but not as my older siblings, but as the people they really are.

     Jesse is no longer the mean older brother that didn't share his stash of candy with me. Rachel and Sarah are no longer the girls that didn't let me into their room. Sam is no longer the kid that sword fights with me in the back yard. They're people now. People with hopes, fears, and faults*. And even though I grew up with them, I'm just starting to get to know them. So yeah, I'm the New One. And I'm pretty excited about it.

     Oh, my parents? Please. They deserve their own post.

*Except for Jesse