Mind Your Own God Damn Business

My Mom and Dad are taking a two week road trip to Louisiana to visit family. My Mom retired last year and my Dad retired the year before that, and they’re both adjusting to retirement, or what I call “Basically the way I live now”. Part of this adjustment is that they both have a lot of energy that they were using to run a classroom eight hours a day that they’re trying to figure out what to do with. That energy is a little bit…unfocused, shall we say. I’m actually kind of curious to know what two weeks of two juiced-up newly retired people in a space exactly the size of a Toyota Prius looks like. My guess? INTENSE.

While they’re gone, my little brother and I are hanging out at their house. It’s been an interesting experience for me, because it’s probably a glimpse at some form of my future. My little brother has a brain injury from his childhood that has done about three things to him: He’s terrible at remembering things, he has some trouble controlling his body and I think he’s going to be about 17 or 18 maturity-wise for the rest of his life. My parents are edging closer and closer to 70, and it’s going to be harder and harder for them to take care of him, and so that responsibility is probably going to fall on my shoulders. I’m not sure if that means that he’ll be living in an apartment in close proximity to me or in the same place as I am or what, but I’m pretty sure that I will be caring for him to some extent when my parents can’t anymore. Spending two weeks with him has given me an idea of what some of this will entail. Here are some of the things I am getting prepared for:

Actually, looking at this picture makes me think that Babe Ruth might have been pretty skilled at clogging toilets too.

1. Getting used to clogged toilets.

This is apparently kind of my brother’s “thing”. Antonio Stradivari built violins, Babe Ruth hit home runs, and my little brother clogs toilets.

There’s a lot to love about this. First of all, it’s awesome to go into the bathroom and find the toilet looking like a grizzly broke into the house, poured a bag of quick-dry cement into the toilet and then took a dump in it. There’s just no better feeling.

The thing that I really love, though, is that he is always convinced that it wasn’t him. It doesn’t matter if it’s the toilet in the one bedroom apartment that only he lives in or the toilet in my parent’s house that I know that no one else has been using. No matter the circumstances, he is CONVINCED that he had nothing to do with it. So either my brother isn’t paying attention, or someone really is sneaking into the house and clogging the toilet. Either way, I frequently find myself going into the bathroom to grab some q-tips or take a shower and staring longingly at the toilet, wishing that I could plunge it. Thanks to my brother, my prayers have been answered.

2. Yelling at video games.

My brother loves video games more than I do. He spends all of his disposable income and time on playing games. Unfortunately, thanks to his struggles with motor control, he frequently gets frustrated with them and then starts yelling at them. This fluctuates between being kind of irritating and kind of hilarious. Take last night: He had just purchased Brutal Legend, which is fucking awesome – it’s all about metal, the main character is voiced by Jack Black, it’s a lot of hack-and-slash combined with RTS – but it has some parts that are frustrating for my brother. There was one part that was a timed racing section that he just couldn’t get through. I tried to guide him through it, but he just couldn’t do it. I went to class and came back, and he was STILL on that same part. Every time he would fail, he would scream, or slam the controller in his lap. My favorite, though was when he started yelling things like “FUCK YOU JACK BLACK!!!” at the screen. I finally just broke my “No video games for a year” resolution and ran through the thing for him. It only took about 45 seconds, and it got him out of the part that he’d been fighting with for about three hours. Besides, I had to go to sleep, and I couldn’t spend all night listening to him yell.

3. Crazy sleeping schedules.

At my nuttiest, I was going to bed around 4 or 5 AM and getting up around 12. My little brother has been getting up around 5 or 6PM. I have no idea when he’s going to bed. When I ask him, he always says “About 1″, but if you ask him if the sun was up, he usually says yes, so I’m guessing that he’s not too sure when he’s actually going to bed. Unless he needs between 18 and 20 hours of sleep a night, this seems unlikely to me.  Either way, the man pushes weird sleeping schedules to a limit that I was never capable of.

4. Clogged Toilets

Did I mention clogged toilets? Because that’s my favorite thing about living with my brother BY FAR.

To be fair, it’s the only problem I’ve had up to this point. Otherwise, he’s a pretty agreeable guy. I just need to teach that son of a bitch how to use a plunger.

Either way, I need to go take a shower and get ready for my evening. my fingers are crossed that there’s nothing awful waiting for me in the bathroom.

I’m just glad that my brother isn’t this guy: