Thing-a-day.com

My oldest brother Ed is a pillar of patience.  He never complains.  He could manage an entire room of drunk and dis-orderlies without ever raising his voice and maintain his sense of humor.  If he was bleeding out his eyes while his hair was on fire, he’d say oh, I’m fine, did you want a cup of coffee or a beer or something?  This being totally true does not mean that me and my other 2 brothers did not try and test his patience every chance we got.  Whether on purpose or not.  A good image of my brother is that scene in The Departed when Alec Baldwin has to break up the fight between Matt Damon and Mark Wahlburg.  My brother Ed is Baldwin in that.  He kind of enjoyed it I think.  I hope.  And Eric and Mark, well, they were brothers that had just about 2 years between them.  That kind of relationship can usually only be expressed in punches and choke holds until you hit your late teens. 

One of my favorite movies is Junebug, and there’s a scene between the two brothers in the garage, not a lot of words get said, but suddenly one of them throws a wrench at the other’s head.  The first time I saw this I laughed right out loud.  It was completely normal to me.  It wasn’t until I reviewed the movie with my friend Christopher (an only child raised in NYC) who found that moment just completely violent and out of control.  I was thinking, huh that’s like a Tuesday.  This does not mean that we did not love each other, it’s just true what they say, boys will be boys.  And boys like to watch wrestling and then they like to re-inact moves and beat the living crap out of each other for eating the last of the Life cereal or ordering their younger sister around, or breathing that way!!!  All the time!!!!

 So sometime during Ed’s high-school years, this would have put me in grade school like somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade, both my parents were going to have to work a 3pm -11pm type shift.  My father was a State Trooper and it could have been that he was teaching at the Academy or stationed outside of a driving home range at this time which meant he was gone from Monday - Friday and my mom was working the afternoon-night shifts at the hospital.  Now it is important to know that we were all extra curricular activity kids.  We all played sports and I had dance class year round on top of sports.  Ed’s sport was hockey.  Wait, scratch that, Ed’s life was hockey.   Like he breathed it.  He still does.  It’s in his blood.  I mean yeah, we’re from the great white north where you kind of have to play hockey but for Ed, well it was what he did, who he was.  So when it came to pass that he was going to have sit out one year because my parents were going to be at work at night and we younger kids still needed a babysitter and we couldn’t really afford to pay a babysitter every night.  The latter can be blamed on my brothers eating my parents out of house and home.  My mother had to buy 4 gallons of milk every other day!  For real.  They just didn’t stop eating.  My parents could have been stockbrokers and we wouldn’t have had enough to feed them.

 This was not good news.  Ed was going to have to miss a season of hockey.  He was voted Top Iceman and stuff.  He was totally not going to get to play this year.  And it was our fault.  Me, Eric and Mark.  His major function was feeding us.  We were pretty self sufficient, got to and fro practices and lessons on our own or had rides already set up by our Mom, did our homework on our own and what not.  But he did have to feed us.  And as I’ve stated before we always had extras at dinner.  Extra kids.  And since we were kids we were kind of oblivious that we had already pushed Ed to his limit just by existing and therefore taking away hockey from him that season, so we continued to see just how many of the Nicholson kids we could fit at our dinner table. 

Now, my grandfather had built our kitchen table and made benches so it was more space efficient and because my Mom knew there would rarely just be the 6 of us at the table.  Benches made sense.  You could totally scrunch in like 5 kids on each side.  Ok, so, dinner.  Dinner would be served at the exact same time that “Get the Led Out” was on 104.7 the classic rock station growing up.  In accordance with the Law of Ed there was to be no speaking during dinner or when Led Zeppelin played.  So even if you ate your dinner wicked fast and were licking your plate by the time Good Times, Bad Times was over you had to be completely silent for all 7 Led Zeppelin songs at 7pm to be played.

This was just the rule.  And rules are obviously….made to be broken….and also made to be enforced.  Let me be the first to say; I am not a quiet girl.  I am not known for my silence.  I am known for not ever shutting up.  Like ever.  Like way passed the point, I’m still going.  Still yammering on.  So telling me to be quiet is like caffeinating a chihuahua and telling it to sit.  Ain’t gonna happen.  I remember it pretty clearly.  The dinner table, spaghetti (which was pretty much 5 nights a week in our house), Ed at the head of the table, I think Eric was at the other end.  I was next to Eric, Kate Nicholson was next to me, Kevin Broderick was accross from me, Mike Cahill was next to him, and Mark was next to Kate.  We were having a really hard time keeping it down.  Dinner was exciting and I’m pretty sure I had a crush on Kevin and Mike so I’m sure I was trying to impress them with my girlish charm at age 7.  Well, we got a warning, then we got another, and as The Ocean played on the radio and I kept jabbering on about something totally relevant and witty I’m sure, my brother Ed reached over and flipped the entire bench sending me, Mark, Kate and a whole lotta spaghetti across the kitchen.  Before I could say D’yer Maker my brother Ed was standing over me with his hand over my mouth saying PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! JUST SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!!!!

I think we were all so shocked at his loss of patience that we actually listened to him.  Well, they did, I’m pretty sure I started crying which was my deus rigeur and went into the bathroom to get it together.  After that, it was pretty easy to be quiet at dinner.  I think, either way I am pretty sure Ed went back to being this insanely chill Buddhist who could always smile through any amount of irritation.  That and we got Debbie down the street to babysit so he could play hockey again.   And Led Zeppelin, is still totally one of my favorite bands…..Ever!

Last 5 posts by alexis

• my phirst arty photo - March 3rd, 2008
• my first photo creation - March 3rd, 2008
• my zombie movie and where i've been - March 3rd, 2008
• i'm a total cheat - February 21st, 2008
• come onnnn, do it for me! - February 19th, 2008