Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [40]
Those were grand times. Our parents never required us to wear seat belts (are you really surprised by that revelation?), and we’d read, play games, or wrestle in the back as we zipped down Highway 5, heading for grandma Sparks’s house. I don’t mean the kind of wrestling where we’d poke each other and whine; I mean real wrestling complete with headlocks, punches, twisted arms and legs, and punctuated with screams and tears. Usually, my parents would ignore it for a while, but sometimes it got to the point that dad would finally look over his shoulder and scream at us to “Stop shaking the G-D-N van!” thereby initiating the inevitable DEFCON countdown, which we never seemed able to avoid. And, of course, we’d stare at our father as if he had cornstalks growing out of his ears, wondering what on earth could have possibly upset him.
“It was your fault,” Micah would hiss. “You shouldn’t have cried.”
“But you were hurting me,” I’d say.
“You need to learn to be tougher.”
“You were twisting my ear! I thought you were ripping it off!”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“You’re an idiot.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’d you call me?”
“He called you an idiot,” Dana would helpfully add.
Micah would glower. “I’ll show you who the idiot is . . .”
At which point, the wrestling would begin again. I often tell people that we never actually drove to San Diego; for the most part, the van sort of hopped there.
We were also “country comes to town” when it came to visiting with our cousins. Their families tended to be better off financially than we were, and as soon as we arrived we’d go blasting through the door toward the cousins’ bedroom. Beyond the door, we knew, was Nirvana itself and we’d simply stare for a moment in wonder, little tears welling in the corners of our eyes. They had more toys than we’d ever seen, and we quickly made good use of them.
“Hey what’s this?” we’d ask, grabbing something. Soon we’d be wiggling pieces, trying to figure it out.
“It’s the new, battery-operated construction crane,” my cousin would proudly exclaim. “It can assemble entire houses from scratch—”
Snap.
The cousin would freeze in horror at the sight of the toy in two pieces.
“What happened?” we’d ask.
“You . . . you . . . broke it,” he’d whimper.
“Oh, sorry about that. Hey . . . what’s this one do?”
“It’s the new electronically enhanced remote control car, complete with—”
Snap.
“Oh, sorry,” we’d say again. “Hey, what’s this . . .”
Once the toys were broken (we always wondered how so many accidents could happen in such a short time), we’d try to play with our cousins. Not that they viewed it as playing. We did nothing with them that we didn’t do back home—to us, it was regular fun—but to them, it bordered on merciless torture. None of them, it seemed, had lived a childhood like ours, i.e., one without real rules. We thought it great fun, for instance, rolling the little ones up in area rugs until they were pinned and suffocated, unable to move. Then my brother and I would take turns launching ourselves from the couch onto the soft bulge where their bodies were and screaming, “Bingo!” whenever we really crunched them. Or, we might dunk them in the pool—really dunk them, for a long, long time—until they nearly passed out. Sometimes, we’d try to teach our cousins how to punch hard, demonstrating on their little arms.
“No, not like that. Cock your arm waaay back, and really use the knuckle. Like this . . .”
POW!
If there was one thing wrong with visiting my cousins—and it pains me to admit it, since they’re family—it’s that they were whiners. They cried all the time when we were around. It’s a wonder how their parents ever dealt with it.
Anyway, the visit would eventually come to an end and it would be time to leave. We’d head to the van, and we’d turn around to see our cousins ghost-white and trembling as they waved good-bye to us, their little arms covered in bruises.
“See you next year!” we’d call out.
Later, on the way back to grandma’s, my brother would ask, “What were they doing with their faces