Unpredictability Under the Radar
When Jonathan was born a year and a half after me, my princely status as the heir of exclusive affection was over. I would now be required to share. Everything! Affection, attention, food, clothes, toys, and my room. I got to keep my portable jacuzzie though, a plastic cooler without a top, which was less abrasive than the aluminum tub they found for my brother.
Mom was relieved with his arrival because it portended something new, something fresh. For one thing, he was lighter than expected. The usually reliable mommy-weight-gain-to-baby-birth-weight ratio had predicted something in the neighborhood of 8 or 9 pounds. He actually weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces; a more manageable size than his older brother, yours truly, who tipped the scale at 9 pounds, 2 ounces. And THAT after being induced two weeks early. I was like a Baby Huey my first year; big and dopey. Jonathan was more like Tweety Bird, by comparison; cute yet devious.
My first year, before Jonathan came, my mother’s friends–concerned mothers with more progressive babies–would ask things like, “Shouldn’t he be sitting up by now?” or, “Shouldn’t he be talking?”
“No,” my mom would say, “he’s just big for his age.”
Well, kind of. I’m not sure mom forgave me for being over nine pounds. More embarrassing still, of her four children, I was the only one to come out with a full head of hair. I suspect she overplayed the “bigger than his age” defense because I was a slow starter, despite my size. It would not surprise me to learn that she used my bigness as a cover for what she feared was stalled cognitive development.
Interestingly, Jonathan, the lightest and scrappiest of our four-member brood, has been a study in constant movement ever since he was born.
“Jonathan! Will you please stop dancin’ around!” said dad, exasperated and anxious to quiet the restless blur in his periphery.
“I not dancin’ daddy, I hoppin’!”
This was true, but not really the point. Within dad’s repertoire of undesirable behavior categories, you were either, dancin’ around, foolin’ around or fartin’ around. Within these three, all manner of particular behaviors–such as “hoppin”–could be defined. It wasn’t prudent to correct dad’s choice of words, but at that tender age of two, Jonathan was in the clear. He had at least another year or two before he would be accused of flirting with that other less ambiguous category called, “talking back,” a category, I daresay, Jonathan excelled at in his teens.
Unlike his laggardly predecessor, Jonathan was anxious to get out of the womb and on with life. We were opposites in many ways. A simple catalog of the contrasts will serve to illustrate this point:
- He was a ravenous eater; I needed to be coaxed.
- He was wired for constant movement and social mastery; I was wired for lethargy and long bouts of catatonic introspection.
- He had a quick tongue that often got him into trouble; I had a slow tongue, which usually meant my parents had to be more vigilant to keep me out of the “slow” classes in school.
- He now works at a frenzied pace abroad with his base in New York City for big bucks; I now work in Higher Education, just for the “thrill of it.”
These differences are interesting now, in retrospect, and perhaps to parents who watched it as it happened. We thought nothing of them. We only knew each other. It was quite convenient, actually, to have a companion who thought differently enough to come up with new ideas and alike enough to consort with. Our differences worked to our advantage. We were a force of unpredictability under the radar. Jonathan, rascally creative genius, was quick to come up with lunatic ideas on the fly. I, more fearful and methodical, tempered his highly visible plans into workable, clandestine operations. (Ok, for the record, I had my own share of lunatic ideas, he will tell you–he will interrupt to tell you!–but for the sake of a more consistent narrative, I’m sticking to my story that his ideas were crazier.)
Yes, a force of unpredictability under the radar, that is, until we got caught. Then, the response was something like, “I can’t believe I even have to tell you this…” or, “You’re not leaving here until I get a good explanation about why you deliberately disobeyed me!” or, “What on earth made you think throwing rocks at cars was a smart thing to do?” That last one was a miscalculation on my part. The lady across the street, Mrs. Basset, the wife of my 3rd grade teacher, knew who we were and reported us promptly, after storming out of her front door with the warning, “I see what you’re doing. You should not be throwing rocks at cars!”
We flew home on wings of fear. Later that night we got the “punishment-fit-the-crime treatment.”
“So,” my father said, half grinning, “you boys like throwing rocks, do you?”
We knew the drill. Avoid eye contact, look sheepish and contrite and most importantly, say nothing.
“I’ve got a job for you that involves R O C K S.” He spoke the word “rocks” slowly, knowing our attention was now at his mercy. With calm deliberation, the kind that relishes those moments when poetic justice is about to be served, dad proceeded to tell us how, since we like rocks so much, we could pick out all the small rocks that had been plowed into the yard with last year’s record snow. He’d been looking for a way to clean those rocks out for months, which were dulling the lawnmower blades every time he ran over them. Occasionally, a rock would fly out from under the mower hitting the car, the house or an unwary family member. There were thousands of these pebbles, half buried in the grass, that needed to be hand-picked, tossed lightly–NOT thrown–into our little red wagon, and then transported back to our driveway. By a kid’s reckoning, a week’s worth of tedious rock play.
For most adventures, or misadventures like this one, we were pretty like-minded. Once in a while, though, differences in personality would surprise not only mom and dad, but me too. Jonathan could be a shrewd competitor at games, for example. And not just any games. He told us, on many occasions, that he only liked to play “winning games.” By this he meant games that he had a good chance of winning, such as “LIFE,” or “Monopoly,” or “Gin Rummy.” Recreational sports, such as tossing a ball or frisbee were out of the question. Strictly strategic games such as Chess, Checkers or Stratego were, curiously, not included in his list of “winning” games; they had to have some level of luck by which, we learned later, he could manipulate the outcome. Somehow, he always got to be a doctor in LIFE. Somehow, he always managed to get hotels on Boardwalk in Monopoly along with the coveted role of banker. We always suspected foul play but could never catch him. But now I’m making him sound like an impulsive cheater, when all I’m really trying say is that Jonathan was willing to do more than most people in order to win, as you will see quite clearly in this next story.
In the summer of 1975, or thereabouts, our family vacationed at Bethany Beach, Delaware. My grandparents had an apartment there, a few blocks from the beach, which included a boardwalk. It was one of the most memorable vacations we had because of at least three things: Close proximity to fun (the beach, mini-golf and gift shop), freedom to roam freely on our rented bikes, and a daily allowance of one dollar. Oh blessed memory! The daily one dollar allowance idea. It was dreamlike, a beautiful thing while it lasted.
My grandparent’s apartment was on the second story. From its windows, we could look down on the mini-golf course located below, adjacent to the apartment. Mom and dad could take birds-eye video of our game winning strokes. A few blocks away was a dime store that sold little rubber monsters of all colors and shapes for a dollar each. How perfect was that? There were dozens of them. At the beginning of each day, we’d each get a dollar, jump on our bikes and pick out a monster from the store.
All was going perfectly well those first few days: Rounds of Mini Golf, long rides around town, fun at the beach and cash for rubber monsters. Until, near the end of our stay, there was an unwelcome disturbance to an otherwise tranquil week. I had “lost” one of my front teeth, which meant, CHA-CHING, I got another dollar! Another dollar, another monster, which was one more than Jonathan had. I now had five monsters to his four.
I don’t recall gloating over this, but I’m sure I was still pretty happy about it. Pretending not to be happy was a form of empathy too advanced for an eight year old. My glee seeped out. Jonathan was one monster down and in a need of a handout, but alas, our parents were not socialists. The Tooth Fairy smiled on me and I was provided an inconvenient advance.
So, Jonathan did what any aspiring entrepreneur would do. He asked for a pair of pliers. Grandma shuffled through here kitchen drawer of odds and ends, pulled out a pair of pliers used for fixing bikes and leaky faucets and handed it to him. Whether this was in plain sight of mom or dad, I don’t know. The apartment was not that big. Jonathan’s timing though, was always impeccable. He chose either late morning or early afternoon, between events, when there was plenty of activity and when no one was really paying attention.
At one point, someone asked where Jonathan was and someone else replied that he was in the bathroom. “He’s sure been in there a while.” That was as far as the investigation went that day, until he came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later with a bloody smile and tooth in hand. Instantly, everything made sense, but it was too late. He exchanged both tooth and pliers for a dollar and a monster. What else could they do? They were not socialists. At least, it was reasoned, he pulled a baby tooth.
I have to wonder how many teeth he wrestled with that day before he found one that would submit to his will and come out. Were the surviving teeth, racked and bent in their foundations as they were never meant to be, destined for braces from that day forward? We’ll never know. But it is interesting to note that Jonathan did eventually get braces and that he was the only one in the family to need them.
© 2010 – 2011, R M Braaten. All rights reserved.