A Story About My Sister and a Preview Of The Book

It was a difficult childhood.

Working on a book.

Here is one of the chapters. It is one of the lighter chapter and the first transcription of the story that won me my first Moth slam. Enjoy!

She Saved Me From Choking, In Spite Of Her Desire To Strangle Me. – from the upcoming book version of Monsters In The Wood.

Amy and I had been fighting all day. At the ages of thirteen and eight respectively, our stamina for battle was endless. We had started around breakfast, made our way through lunch, and were working our way towards dinner.

“You’re stupid!”

“You’re a jerk!”

“You’re dumb!”

We could do this for hours. In fact we did do this for hours. From Saturday morning cartoons to the primetime line-up, we followed each other around the house.

“You’re a butt-head!”

“You’re a dork!”

“You’re fat!”

Upstairs, downstairs, outside to walk the dog. We had started in the living room. From there we had covered the basement and each of our bedrooms in a roving exchange of insults. It was like one of those episodes of The West Wing where all the smart, witty, earnest characters would walk around the halls of The White House debating gun control policy or health care. The only difference was we were debating which one of us smelled more like doo-doo.

dog heimlich, no joke.

“You’re a moron!”

“You are so annoying!”

One would go to the bathroom and the other would wait outside.

“You should never have been born!”

“You should drop dead!”

“I hate you!”

“I hate you more!”

We were inexhaustible. The great conflicts of history, The British and The French Empires, China and Japan, America and the Soviets, Israel and everyone in the Middle East who isn’t Israel, these people had nothing on our ability to drag shit out.

Unfortunately, our Mother did not share our dedication to the cause. We had been a constant buzz in the background of her day, louder or more muted in waves like a mosquito the size of two very chubby children. Eventually, the very sound of our voices began to make her regret the DNA she had donated to what was clearly a failed experiment in continuing the species. Something had gone terribly wrong and mutants had been created. Mentally deficient mutants who lived only to orbit one another in an ongoing binary of mutual abuse. Sadistic little aberrations, these were her off spring. She didn’t remember drinking during the pregnancies. Was it too late to start now?

When the front made its way to the kitchen, where Mom had holed up, this was when she broke. She was talking on the phone with work papers spread out in front of her when Amy decided to make a sandwich. I was right behind her delivering a protracted speech concerning the ugly nature of her face, as if it were a matter for the UN Security Council. It was probably the sandwich that got us in trouble. If she had just gone in for something you could grab and carry, like a pop tart, something with no prep time, our mother might have gone on pretending she didn’t have children. A sandwich requires assembly, it takes time. I had just called Amy a freak when I heard Mom say into the phone, “I’ll have to call you back.” I remember a kind of half thought that we might be in trouble. Before it could become a full grown realization of impending doom, my Mother was standing over us.

CHOKING MAN_2 (the first one didn't make it.)

“I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!”

Her eyes were shooting beams of rage that went through us, through the cabinets and walls of the kitchen, across the sideyard, burned through the fence and killed the neighbor’s Shitzu where it stood. We stared up at her. Who us?

“I don’t want to hear one more word from either of you! I am sick to death of the constant fighting…”

Amy opened her mouth. She didn’t get a word out.

“I don’t care who started it! I just don’t want to hear it anymore!”

Amy shut her mouth.

“You two are going to go downstairs! I don’t care what you do! Watch TV! But do not look at each other! Do not talk to each other! Do not acknowledge each other at all in any way! If you kill each other you better make sure I don’t hear it happening! NOW GO!”

We went. We knew we were getting off easy. My mother was declining to punish our behavior solely because she didn’t want to deal with us any longer than she had to that day. If she had decided to take the long way there would have been whining and blame bandied about and cries about what was fair and what wasn’t. Like a cop who lets you off because they don’t want to do the paperwork, Mom was just having us gone. Besides, if she let us go and we actually did manage to find a way to silently assassinate one another, that would save her all the trouble of having to find out what had gone so wrong with our little brains. Sometimes, effective parenting is about trying to find the most practical solutions.

To prove my defectiveness, I, when directed not to make another sound, found an entirely unrelated reason to speak on my way out of the room.

“Can I have an orange?”

The oranges were on the counter, in easy reach, I could get it myself and I knew she didn’t care. I just needed to make some noise, I needed to push it. I have seen other kids do this and I cannot explain this behavior. It is the thing they have in common with house cats who will piss on the couch right in front of you, watch blank faced while you scream, and then go meow at their full food bowl. It’s saying, “I know I have given you several very good reasons to take my little life and I am going to answer that by doing something so small and irritating that you have to tolerate it.”

The woman just stared at me in incomprehension, “I don’t care, Brad.”

The waiter you treat like shit has your life in their hands.

I took the orange and followed Amy downstairs.

In light of the enraged parent within earshot, Amy and I made a silent agreement not to fight over what was on TV. This was usually our favorite point of contention. There had been some rules worked out at some point in the distant past and they were all based around shouting over one another. The first thing you could shout was “Called It!” This applied to upcoming programs you saw a preview for and wanted to reserve the right to watch. For immediate use there was “Watching It!” This applied to shows you found at random. Then there was “Not Watching It!” For when you found something you thought the other person would enjoy and wanted to preemptively deny them the pleasure. Spite was a time-honored part of the system dating back as far as the Code of Justinian. These rules in no way prohibited the throwing of tantrums or the hurling of insults.

Amy was always much better at this system than I was, mainly because she always got to the remote before I did. Whoever had the remote had a natural advantage. They set the tempo; they knew when they were getting ready to flip the station. The other person had to hang on the edge of their seat and focus with maximum intensity on the TV. The remoteless man had to be one of constant vigilance. Especially, when your sister is really into event programming. I lost the same fights year after year and, year after year, had to sit through the annual broadcasts of The Sound Of Music, The Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind and anything where people in shiny clothes inexplicably burst into song. Then there were the awards shows. Amy loved awards shows. Thanks to her Manchurian Candidate style conditioning techniques, I am one of the few straight men on the planet that can rip apart an inappropriate red carpet ensemble with all the fervor and dexterity of a bastard love child of Joan Rivers and Perez Hilton.

Amy had the remote by the time I got downstairs. She had settled on Little House On The Prairie. I hated Little House On The Prairie. People who rode horses and wore floppy hats and yet never had a single shootout. That’s just stupid. They spent all of their time at church and school. Which was what we did. It was regular life only worse, there was no TV. But I wasn’t going to argue. We weren’t the brightest children in the world but we knew when we had gotten off easy. So I sat down on the couch and resigned myself to watching the deaf girl learn a valuable life lesson.

I was eating my orange in the TV trance when my Mom popped her head downstairs and announced she was making a run to the store. My sister and I made sort of rudimentary vocal responses as an indication of acknowledgment, but neither of us had heard anything she had said. The TV was on. She could have abandoned the family entirely and set fire to the house as she left. Until it affected reception in some way, we wouldn’t have known the difference. This was even true for me and I hated the show I was watching. I was eating the orange two slices at a time. I was always in a hurry at that age. No idea why. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no obligations. No one was waiting for me and no decision I made carried any weight for anyone, not even me. Usually, my hurry was related to getting something done quickly so that I could have the opportunity to do nothing. Anything that stood between me and the state of total inertness that I achieved when sitting in front of the flashing picture machine was something to be endured and done away with fast. On that day, though, I was already watching the TV. Separation anxiety does not explain the sort of raw impatience and greed that had me shoving this orange down my throat as if, at any second, I might die. Then the orange almost killed me.

I don’t think I chewed the last two slices at all. They certainly felt structurally sound when they lodged in my throat. They felt as adeptly designed and engineered as any aircraft carrier, and roughly the same size, as they came to a dead stop in the spot just beyond my gag reflex and just in front of my air way. I opened my mouth and started working weird maneuvers with my neck and jaw muscles. Nothing worked, the orange wouldn’t move. Then it occurred to me that not only could I not swallow, I also couldn’t breath.

ONLY IF YOU CAN SEE IT!

This was such a shock that I actually looked away from the TV. I looked at Amy. She was still communing with the ghost of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I tried to call to her. Couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breath, couldn’t make sound. Which is when the paralyzing panic hit me. Then I couldn’t move either. I choked out some version of my sister’s name.

“AAughMMEY…”

All gurgle and spit and no tone. Still she heard it. And waved it off without a glance. She thought I was just being gross, trying to annoy her.

“Auuag…ghhm…”

She didn’t even look at me. Meanwhile, my eyeballs were starting to hurt. My head seemed full and hot. Even my hands were turning purple.

“Auck! Auck! Gauck!”

Finally, she was irritated enough to answer me and turned my way. “You are such an idiot… Oh my god…”

Amy was thirteen and thought the Heimlich Maneuver was something the older kids did in the parking lot behind the mall. Instead, she grabbed me and threw me on the floor. Then she jumped on my chest. She grabbed me by the neck with her left hand and squeezed as if I were a water balloon. Then she took the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand and shoved them down my throat. She had her hand in my mouth up to her wrist and she’s rooting around in there like she was trying to feel out the best gift in a birthday party grab bag. Finally, Amy got a hold of the orange slices, gripped them and yanked them free, pulling with such force that her spit and mucus covered hand raised up into the air, a half chewed, orange filled fist of victory!

And this is the pose she was in, sitting on my chest, one hand around my throat, and the other curled into a raised fist when my Mother, having gotten halfway to the store without her purse, walked back into the house.

“THAT IS IT!” Suddenly, my Mom was on us. “I have had enough of you two!”

She had us each by a wrist, shaking us vigorously. As if further brain damage would somehow help the situation. She didn’t seem to notice that I was almost entirely limp nor that I was trying to speak

“… ack… mom…”

“You two drive me nuts! If I let you live you will be grounded forever.”

Amy had burst into shocked and confused tears. I was still trying to talk.

“… mom… (gasp) Amy… Amy saved my life…”

My mom stopped.

“… orange… almost choked… (gasp) orange…”

My mom looked at Amy. She saw the wet, spit and snot covered orange slices that she still had in her little fist. Then Mom looked at me. She saw how red and tear streaked my face was. She put together what had happened, that I had almost died, that Amy had come to my rescue, and she stared at us, her precious children and she let go of our wrists and we dropped to the carpet and she said…

“Goddamn kids.”

And she turned and went back upstairs.

The population must be controlled.