I used to think my purpose in life was watching “Fantasy Island.” But
then that got cancelled and I was left without a purpose.
But then I started writing, and discovered that was a way cooler
purpose in life than watching “Fantasy Island,” or even “The Love Boat.”
But then I started thinking, does my silly little humor column really
have much of a purpose? All I talk about is my little neuroses, or
foolish things I’ve thought of, or my crazy family.
But then I realized that telling you about my crazy family is in itself
a pretty good purpose in life. Maybe, I thought, my purpose in telling
you about my crazy family is to make you feel better about yours.
Which brings me to my brother.
I’ve already told you about my mother. While my mother has mostly
skirted the law, my brother Adam has systematically ignored it. Indeed,
it’s fair to say that he’s thumbed his nose at it. In fact, he rushed the
goal
posts, turned around and spiked the ball and did a little touchdown dance.
You see, for many years, Adam was a thief.
While this is a terrible thing, I have always consoled myself with the
fact that Adam was never a very good thief.
He got an infection that lasted three months from scaling a barbed wire
fence after security discovered him in an electronics warehouse and
chased him through the grounds.
He once got a hernia carrying a safe to his car when he couldn’t open
it in the office where he had broken in and found it.
And one time he got beaten almost senseless by a young lady when he
attempted to steal her purse.
None of that deterred Adam. He may not have been a good thief, but he
was persistent. If he’d turned his attention to his studies, he could
have been president.
Okay, maybe that’s unrealistic. It’s not that Adam’s stupid. He isn’t.
It’s just that years of drug abuse have left him a little slow on the uptake,
so that Adam trying to express a thought sounds something like this:
“I don’t know, sometimes I...I don’t know, and then when I think about
it, I think...You know....but then I think maybe, you know...but then,
I just...I don’t know. You know?”
I love my brother, but I think it’s fair to say that he is no Daniel Webster.
So with his vocabulary pretty much at its zenith, Adam continued his
life of crime, no matter how hard the family tried to change his ways.
All that changed one evening when Adam staked out an ATM machine in my
hometown. It was autumn, and all the leaves on the bank’s grounds had been
raked into a giant pile by a guy from the union that rakes the leaves.
Now the
leaves lay there waiting for the guy to come along from whatever union
puts
the leaves in bags.
Most people would see those leaves and say, “Gee, wouldn’t it be fun to
jump in that big ol’ pile of leaves?”
My brother saw those leaves and said, “Ooh, camouflage.”
So he burrowed into the pile of leaves until he was completely buried.
To an onlooker the pile of leaves looked just like a pile of leaves,
though if they looked very, very closely they might have noticed that
the pile of leaves had eyes.
Adam had been lying in wait in the pile of leaves for about 20 minutes
when
a police cruiser pulled into the parking lot. Two officers got out of the
car and
began walking the grounds, shining their flashlights all around.
As they drew closer, the beam of the flashlight creeping closer and
closer to his eyes, Adam had only one thought.
“How am I going to explain this?”
Difficult as this may be to believe, Adam’s explanation that he was waiting
for
a friend to come and give him a ride home did not convince the police.
Since he was a persistent offender, Adam was sentenced to seven years
in prison. He served four and was released on parole.
“Adam, you’ve just spent four years in jail and your parole is
finished. What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to Disney World.”
Travel alert: My brother has moved to Florida.
In an attempt to start over, Adam has decided he needs a change of
scenery. Someplace where nobody knows about his checkered past. Where
he can gain a new lease on life without the bad influences of his old one.
I know what you’re thinking: Sure, that’s fine for him, but what about
the rest of us?
Well, I can tell you proudly that my brother has not committed a crime
in several years now.
But just to be safe, if you use an ATM machine in Florida, take a quick
glance around you for any suspicious piles of leaves.