Hey Brother

Arguably one of the most difficult decisions ever made in the history of humankind had to be when Britney Spears and the bosses at Jive Records sat down to decide what song would be selected as the follow-up single to “…Baby One More Time.” I mean, honestly, how does one even begin to imagine the follow-up to a generation-defining anthem that became the best-selling debut single of all time? Well, we already know “Sometimes” ultimately became that selection and it is safe to say that a strong choice was made. After all, here we are two decades later and Britney Spears is still the most important person on the planet, no questions asked.

To an infinitely lesser degree, I feel like I am in the midst of my own “…Baby One More Time” moment. My first post, “The Start of Something New” was a runaway hit that exceeded my wildest expectations. I earned several hundred views and that shit even went international with viewership coming out of Canada, United Kingdom, and even, India! Crazy! I knew the only way to keep this momentum going strong was to write about the topic I have been for the past several years, my brother.

Before I go any further with this, I really need to address the fact that today, May 2, 2018, is my brother’s 30^th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRIS! I hope that whatever you end up doing today, you are able to remember it tomorrow!

This past weekend my wife, Melissa; my mom, Lynda; and I all went to celebrate Chris’s girlfriend’s daughter’s eighth birthday out at Happy Trails farm, a local institution that Chris’s girlfriend has owned and operated for years. Happy Trails farm is undeniably one of Cutesville’s greatest hidden gems with a variety of animals and activities that could entertain you all day long! I would highly recommend a visit to all!

Well, at this birthday party, when it came time for the birthday girl to open her gifts, everyone gathered around to watch and celebrate her doing so. As she tore into each one, I noticed one face missing from the crowd: my brother’s.

I began to scan everyone standing before me in the event I was merely overlooking him and yet still, nothing. I then started looking up and down the gravel road that centered the farm, back out at the house that stood behind us, towards the horses stables across the way. It didn’t matter where I looked, he was absolutely nowhere to be found. Given my rigid demeanor towards societal expectations, I thought it most inappropriate for him to not be present during this moment. Just as my feelings were nearly resolved to disappointment, I found him in the very place I should have looked first: in a tree.

My brother is wildly inconsistent in his behavior, but one of the few things you can count on him for is that if there is something he can climb, he is going to climb it.

Prior to mine and Melissa’s wedding last summer, we went with our wedding party to an escape room out at The Darkness haunted house near Soulard in St. Louis, Missouri. Before we went in, our host warned us that there would be no reason to climb the shelves or walls as everything we needed would be accessible at ground-level. Roughly half way through our escape, the hosts voice boomed overheard, GET DOWN OFF THE SHELVES PLEASE! I remember whipping around and seeing Chris sitting on top a shelf some six feet higher than the rest of us. The only accompaniment appropriate for my embarrassment in that moment was disgust. I should not have been surprised though given the fact the shelves were so easily climbable, yet still, I thought a then twenty-nine year old man would be able to control his urge to climb anything before him.

Fast-forward a few days from the escape room to our fantastical wedding at the gazebo in Wilson Park here in beautiful Cutesville, USA. There was a bit of time where we all hung around the park waiting for the guests to get seated before the ceremony began. Well, thankfully, I was not near my brother at the time because as I would later come to discover, during that prelude, he was off climbing trees around the park! Chris was one of my groomsmen. He was dressed for the part and was off climbing trees in his wedding attire. Try as I may, I cannot imagine climbing a tree, in a park, prior to the start of a wedding that I was going to be in. I could dream up the next Harry Potter easier than I could imagine tree climbing on someone’s wedding day, but with Chris I have learned to expect the unexpected.

Never knowing what to expect from him used to frustrate the Hell out of me. I remember back in March of 2016 when Chris came out to California to visit me. I was initially looking forward to his visit because I believed it would provide me with the inspiration I needed to progress further in my writing. I could not have been more wrong. It was the most frustrating half-week I can remember. The most prominent example from that week was when we went to Disneyland, the Happiest Place on Earth, and all Chris wanted to do was sit in a café using his Phone Couch, in hopes that he could sell it to potentially interested parties. First of all, Disneyland is not a free market; they are not going to let you sell your own goods there. Secondly, who pays $100 to sit in a café all day in the Happiest Place on Earth!?! Insane. I was appalled – still slightly am about this in fact. I went to Disneyland approximately 150 times in the three years I lived out in California & take personal offense when people don’t love it quite like I do. I thought it would be a fantastic day to go with my brother and my cousin, but Chris’s behavior left Cortni and I wishing we had left him at home. This day did leave a lasting impression on both Cortni and I as we have spent many times since reminiscing. At the time it was beyond annoying, but in retrospect, it is highly amusing and I believe that is how so much of Chris has become.

When I decided to write a book about his never-ending mishaps, I never imagined it would be so difficult for me to do so. I could tell these stories no problem, but taking a five to ten minute oral story and expanding it to paper was not quite as simplistic as I had anticipated. I was finding it nearly impossible to write about a subject that I possessed a great deal of disdain for. My writing lagged and I found myself interjecting too much of me into it. This made most of my early work inauthentic and unbearable. Something had to change, and over the course of the past two years, I feel that it did.

A couple months after my brother visited me in California, Melissa did, and that was when we got engaged – in the Happiest Place on Earth mind you. A FAR superior day to the one spent there with Chris, but oddly enough, probably just as memorable. At the same time I switched careers and felt myself in a far better place mentally. I used the newfound positivity to erase much of what I had written before and start anew. All this positivity had translated to the inspiration I was searching for. Although it had nothing directly to do with my brother, it did have everything to do with how I viewed my brother.

I had been living in a negative headspace for so long behaving like what Chris would refer to as an Energy Vampire. I had a lifetime of irregularities with him that built up my notion of negativity. Once I let down my walls and began to embrace his eccentricities, rather than condemn them, I found myself entertained by him rather than ashamed by him. This helped my writing tremendously and boosted my creative output like never before. I spent so much time prior thinking my writing suffered because my subject made me suffer, but the reality was, my writing suffered because I made myself suffer.

Obviously, this is not to say that those moments of shame do not creep up, after all, he still doesn’t love Disneyland. I typically begin each moment of his bizarreness with my standard aghast reaction, but unlike in the past, it does not take long for me to become wildly entertained.

I love being entertained every bit as much as I love entertaining and that is why for as long as I can remember I have been able to do both through my brother. He is the gift that keeps giving. He is far too set in his off-key ways to pay any mind to what anyone else may be thinking around him and that suits him perfectly. His behavior would suggest that he isn’t even aware that someone might find his actions to be off-putting or odd. This is why for him, the only way to watch his girlfriend’s daughter opens her gifts was from up in a tree.

Really and truly, I think we can all benefit by being a little more like Chris. No one I know has fully embraced his or her true sense of self quite like him. While most of us, regardless of age, occupation, placement in life, etc., are still trying to figure it all out, he has become the master of his life. He owns everything without owning anything and while for many of us that organized chaos would probably make us want to spontaneously combust, he makes it work so seamlessly, and for me, there is definitely something very admirable in that.

Well, I do hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I loved writing it. Feel free to leave a comment below and as always, remember, you are simply the best!

Special Note:  “Hey Brother” is my favorite jam by Avicii, who left us prematurely on April 20^th. I hope he is living it up in the VIP section of Heaven with Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and all the other amazing artists we lost too soon. Rest in Peace.