My brother Evan is mistaken as smart
I am home with my family in Idaho, and my brother Evan has bid us to write down stories from our lives and share them in the evenings. Here is the one I read tonight. I can't imagine it's nearly as funny to people outside of my family; I had to stop for multiple minutes due to laughter that reached the point of crying.
One summer when the family was visiting Minnesota, Evan and I went to spend an afternoon with our cousin Jimmy. Dad put me in charge of $8, saying I should only spend it in case there was some emergency. Jimmy picked us up in his SUV from grandma Corinne’s place in Eagan. He was cool, older, and fun. We went to the house where he stayed with a roommate and that roommate’s mom. At some point, Evan, 5 years old and without shame or semblance of social propriety, made fun of them for still living with the guy’s mom. Jimmy and his friend objected to this most ungracious treatment, insisting that it was perfectly normal for people in their early 20s to still like and even stay with their mothers.
We sat in the living room as the roommate’s mother brought us ginger ale poured into glasses with ice. We sucked them down, me in particular, and she refilled them liberally after Jimmy commented on how much I was capable of drinking.
As we were enjoying our sodas, Jimmy asked us what life at home was like and whether Evan and I got along, what with sharing a room and all. Evan took the opportunity to launch into a diatribe about how things were mostly good, but that he was the only one who seemed to care about the tidiness of our house. I was always leaving toys out, for one, and even our parents were party to the incessant mess that was our house, sometimes leaving the armchair covers strewn about carelessly. Listening to Evan, one would think our family lived not so much in a house as a landfill. Fortunately, he was there to impose order where once was only chaos. He told all present about how he would “confiscate” items when his family’s slovenliness necessitated it.
The three adults in the room burst loudly into laughter. “That’s quite the vocabulary, little man!” Jimmy shouted. The adults looked at each other and bantered about what a little genius Evan must be. “How old are you? Five? Wow!”
My mouth was agape; I didn’t even know where to begin correcting Evan’s fictions. He had never been particularly cleaner than anyone else, and our house wasn’t really ever dirty. The tale’s complete lack of veracity and our family’s reputation, however, were no longer the primary concerns. Here we had been having a fine afternoon, minus, of course, Evan’s brazen effrontery earlier. Now he had to trick our hosts into believing that he was a precocious child. I immediately tried to correct the misimpression by explaining that our parents use the word “confiscate” all the time, usually in reference to Evan’s things that he leaves everywhere. No need to be impressed, I implored, he was merely mimicking common household discourse. But there was no dissuading Jimmy and his housemates, for the rest of the afternoon they referred to Evan as a brainiac.
Before going back to Corinne’s, Jimmy took us to the store to pick out some toys. We decided on a variety pack of things in a mesh net that included a bouncy ball, two wooden rackets, and one of those Velcro tennis balls and catching mitts. When he dropped us off, he told our mom that Evan had an impressive vocabulary and she was eager to agree. When I showed dad the fun toys, a look of anguish swept down his face. He thought I had spent the emergency eight dollars on them, and said that that’s not what he had in mind when he lent me the money.
One summer when the family was visiting Minnesota, Evan and I went to spend an afternoon with our cousin Jimmy. Dad put me in charge of $8, saying I should only spend it in case there was some emergency. Jimmy picked us up in his SUV from grandma Corinne’s place in Eagan. He was cool, older, and fun. We went to the house where he stayed with a roommate and that roommate’s mom. At some point, Evan, 5 years old and without shame or semblance of social propriety, made fun of them for still living with the guy’s mom. Jimmy and his friend objected to this most ungracious treatment, insisting that it was perfectly normal for people in their early 20s to still like and even stay with their mothers.
We sat in the living room as the roommate’s mother brought us ginger ale poured into glasses with ice. We sucked them down, me in particular, and she refilled them liberally after Jimmy commented on how much I was capable of drinking.
As we were enjoying our sodas, Jimmy asked us what life at home was like and whether Evan and I got along, what with sharing a room and all. Evan took the opportunity to launch into a diatribe about how things were mostly good, but that he was the only one who seemed to care about the tidiness of our house. I was always leaving toys out, for one, and even our parents were party to the incessant mess that was our house, sometimes leaving the armchair covers strewn about carelessly. Listening to Evan, one would think our family lived not so much in a house as a landfill. Fortunately, he was there to impose order where once was only chaos. He told all present about how he would “confiscate” items when his family’s slovenliness necessitated it.
The three adults in the room burst loudly into laughter. “That’s quite the vocabulary, little man!” Jimmy shouted. The adults looked at each other and bantered about what a little genius Evan must be. “How old are you? Five? Wow!”
My mouth was agape; I didn’t even know where to begin correcting Evan’s fictions. He had never been particularly cleaner than anyone else, and our house wasn’t really ever dirty. The tale’s complete lack of veracity and our family’s reputation, however, were no longer the primary concerns. Here we had been having a fine afternoon, minus, of course, Evan’s brazen effrontery earlier. Now he had to trick our hosts into believing that he was a precocious child. I immediately tried to correct the misimpression by explaining that our parents use the word “confiscate” all the time, usually in reference to Evan’s things that he leaves everywhere. No need to be impressed, I implored, he was merely mimicking common household discourse. But there was no dissuading Jimmy and his housemates, for the rest of the afternoon they referred to Evan as a brainiac.
Before going back to Corinne’s, Jimmy took us to the store to pick out some toys. We decided on a variety pack of things in a mesh net that included a bouncy ball, two wooden rackets, and one of those Velcro tennis balls and catching mitts. When he dropped us off, he told our mom that Evan had an impressive vocabulary and she was eager to agree. When I showed dad the fun toys, a look of anguish swept down his face. He thought I had spent the emergency eight dollars on them, and said that that’s not what he had in mind when he lent me the money.