Three D: Drop Ins, Daughters and Dog Food.

On Drop Ins, Daughters, and Dog Food.

So, yesterday, my oldest brother dropped in, with his daughter in tow. Her birthday’s coming up, she’s getting her own personal Android tablet (Yes!) and we’d agreed to give her money and digital comics for her birthday. Now transferring large amounts of digital data across a wireless network, then via USB 2.0 to a storage device takes some time. Time that has to be filled with chatter. Ugh.
So we make the small talk and then my brother bombshells me. “So, Aunt Jo mentioned your blog thingy, and I borrowed my wife’s tablet to read it”. Okay, no big deal right? Wrong. My mind is just “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit”. I of course, feel that if Anyone is going to try to censor me, it’d be him. He’s the oldest, first out of the house, first into the military, first to really set up shop. Once before I really got back into the whole “family is family” thing I’d visited him and his wife. They had just a smallish apartment, no kids and a dog. It was also a fucking disaster. We as a clan, don’t seem to be able to meet, face to face without judgement. So, upon hearing that he’s “caught up” on my writing, I’m just waiting for the bombshell. Shockingly neither shoe drops.
He was pretty much. Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. It’s cool to see where you are/were coming from. The “Warring Nations” was spot on. “I also remember “Bullet Man,  though I don’t remember your Spider Man watch”. Needless to say several things happened in my brain at once. First, it’s like “Ding! Level Up! +1 cool brother. Also: Achievement Unlocked: Vindication.”
Then he Really drops the shit, and tells me “yeah, I still can’t get my daughter to believe that we used to eat dogfood.”

Yes, well, that’s pretty damned accurate. Though, I can’t imagine for any logical reason he’d be trying to assure his very well adjusted, catholic school, clarinet playing, super polite and fun to be around daughter that we, as kids ate dog food. I’d say “before you freak out, we didn’t do the canned stuff, it was gross” but yeah, go ahead and freak out. We, and by we, I can account for at least three out of the four of us, if not all four, have at one point in time of our childhood, if not multiple times, eaten dog food. What sucked was, it wasn't even some “Kibbles and Bits” shit that’d have like, I don’t know, tasty bits? We had dry ass, bad smelling, hard as rocks chunky shit kibble. Oh, and “Doggy Donuts”. Now,why the fuck would Any kid want to eat dog food? They don’t. They choose to, because you know what? When you’re fucking hungry, and I mean, hungry enough to stab someone, just to make more food for yourself, at 7, maybe 8 years old? Dog food is totally a viable option. The Really fucked up part was, we had to sneak it in no less. Once we were sent to bed, you didn’t get outta bed. Shit had better fucking be on fire, or you just reincarnated as the next coming of Jesus, or if you were caught out of bed, it was your ass.So, we learned childhood ninja skills, and what do we apply them to? Fucking eating dog food.



Now that I’ve shone light on that particular shame, I feel that I must address my brother’s daughter, and my only niece on his side. If I had to pick any child, from all three brothers to be anything Not like me, it’s her. She’s super polite (Where as I was Eddie Haskel), She will go out of her way Not to take an offer of food or drink or anything else that might make her seem a burden. She’s super frugal, I mean, at this point in time, she has over $100 in iTunes cash stored up, because she got it as gifts but simply didn’t see a “need for it”.  She also up until, apparently recently did not eat jelly. At All. Do you know what you call a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without jelly? Well, we call it a “choke sandwich” because you’re going to be choking that shit down. The jelly’s there for a reason. I try to be a good host when friends and family visit. Admittedly, I probably go overboard/overbearing, but I mean well. She just wasn’t having it. Two hour visit, no drink, no snack, just avoiding my dog and getting comics and hearing weird stories from her dad and I.  What a girl =)