My Little Brother

My brother wears me out -- my little brother. I think that he must like have a permanent extension cord attached to him or something. He just doesn't stop moving -- ever. When he's relaxing, he's fixing a faucet or painting a lamp. I mean when he's relaxing. You should see me relaxing. (Hint: don't look for the Reader's Digest fix-it book on my bedside table.)

So we get home today and Trudy announces with glee a letter from him.

I bet it's something about basketball, she says.

See, he's also like Mr. Sports. Not in the couch potato way or in the go to the bar and stare at ESPN hanging down from the ceiling way. But like really into it. Surfing the web to checkout the history of basketball teams. Sending out emails of proclamation when a great coach retires. Going out running when he's got a few minutes of time and taking the kids with him.

So anyway, Trudy's on to him: enough letters have arrived here of late with clippings from the sports page. She's like so on to him. And sure enough, the letter contained a full-page clipping about basketball -- a Tribune full-pager about the 100-year University of Illinois basketball tradition with a single sentence highlighted in green about Eddie Johnson, who played there when we went to school.

One single sentence highlighted. No letter. No signature. No note other than that implied by the article and the highlighted sentence.

He must have read the article at lunch sometime. With 35 seconds of free time on his hands and nothing else to do, he must have thought, What a perfect time to send a clipping to my brother! And he must have raced to the drawer of pens to get the highlighter and then to some other drawer to grab an envelope and then folded the full-page article into it and licked it shut.

I bet he even had 10 seconds left when he was done.

My little brother makes me tired. I think I'll go to bed, now.

10:08:41 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []