• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Later in the day he came back in the opposite direction and gave us a little head nod with a tight little smile.

We nodded back.

And that was it.

No beating, no knife, no gun-not even any Kung Fu.

Everyone made that jaw-drop, round-mouthed, wide-eyed holy shit can you believe it face. Then we laughed. Then Andy Zambini sneezed and as he sneezed he also cut a giant fart. We laughed. Loud and long.

Bobby Burns never ever threatened any of us again.

As a matter of fact, anytime he walked by he would wave that weak hello and say "hey guys" or just give us the head nod with a tight little smile. Turns out he had never been in jail never killed anyone and Kung Fu was just a TV show he watched like the rest of us. The Vulcan Death Grip? Bullshit. It was all hype. My boot to the balls was just what the doctor had ordered. It had shut up the biggest bully on the block and filled me with a new confidence. I couldn't wait for the next asshole who decided he was going to push me around-man, would he get his. The boot to the balls with absolutely no warning was gonna become the signature move I would use to establish my reputation with all bullies everywhere.

One day later? The opportunity quickly arose. I tried the same exact move on another guy who was bullying and belittling me and calling me a faggot and thought he was going to get away with it and you know what happened? He blocked my foot before it reached his balls and then beat the living daylights out of me. That guy was my brother Johnny.

That's right-I roomed with a bully. My brother wasn't an official bully-just a bully brother. He could handle himself well and was the kind of guy who would wander the streets putting bullies in their place-but when it came to me-well, brothers will be brothers, especially when they share a room small enough to be a walk-in closet for Mini Me.

My brother was way bigger than me and I drove him to the brink as often as I could. Here's one example: he would alphabetize his record collection along the floor against the wall on his side of the room and then-here's where he would fuck up-tell me that he had just alphabetized it and for me not to even look-never mind touch-any of the records. I would then wait until he left and immediately pull all the records out of their sleeves and put them haphazardly into other sleeves-a little process I like to call Anti-Alphabetizing. He would come home later, go to pull out

Crosby, Stills, Nash And A Whiny Canadian and instead end up listening to Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Then the Iron Butterfly sleeve would produce Grand Funk Railroad. Abbey Road? Leon Russell. Leon Russell? Three Dog Night. Watching him struggle through the process-and this happened many many times-never failed to make me smile. And then he would threaten and chase and pummel me-which I never really minded. I would laugh and cackle and it would make him insane. He could kick my ass. So what. We both knew he didn't know Kung Fu or the Vulcan Death Grip. He would go back onto his side of the tiny room and painstakingly realphabetize the records and I would secretly plan how long I would wait before anti-alphabetizing them again.

What did I learn? Patience, pulling, pushing, and the great pleasure of anticipation-waiting for him to come home, knowing the records were all messed up. I learned all four of those things by aggravating my brother. Oh-and Vaseline. Let me explain.

Sometimes my brother would come home late-when I was supposedly asleep-so he would have to put on headphones to listen to the stereo. The big, giant, puffy seventies headphones you see in old movies? Uh huh. You got it.

Once or twice I coated the inside of those babies with Vaseline or this stuff my dad kept with his tools near the water heater-it was called Lava hand soap. And believe me when I tell you-it was aptly named. Lava came in a giant screw-top vat and was invented to wash away engine oil and valve grease. I think it was actually just volcanic spew that some guys at Mount St. Helens let cool down after an eruption