My friends have a saying: “You can take the girl out of Nanticoke, but you can’t take the Nanticoke out of the girl.” And by this they mean that no matter how long I live abroad or how far I manage to get from home, I will always be a small-town girl from Pennsylvania. I will never pay for parking. I will always save bacon fat to make popcorn. I will never pronounce the word “milk” without letting my Appalachian accent show.
The same could be said about my brother. He may have an advanced degree and a closet full of suits, but cannot change the fact that he is from the woods. And it is he, more than my friends or the rest of my family, who can pull me back from my new world of Tuscan wine tasting or weekends in the Finnish countryside and remind me who I am and where I’m from. He can do this with just one sentence:
Nov. Remember that big field mouse that was in our basement a while ago, well I got him!
You probably don’t remember the giant field mouse, but I do – not like it matters. The interesting part of this story isn’t the presence of the rodent so much as the capturing of it – or, more accurately, what my brother means by the phrase, “I got him.” I’ll let him tell you in his own words:
So I’m going down to the basement to move laundry over, and I see Josie [the cat] dart toward the pantry closet. I go to look in the pantry, and there’s the huge mouse sitting in a crate of Ramen (from BJ’s) munching on one of the packages. I yell “Josie! The mouse is right there, get him!” And I picked her up and threw her at the mouse. She landed right on top of him but then jumped off and just stood there looking at me like I’m the one not reading the situation right. The mouse meanwhile is not fazed by having a cat land on his head. He just keeps right on eating my Ramen. I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding. So I took matters into my own hands and I grabbed the mouse and strangled him. He bit me on the thumb and I started bleeding a good bit, but I was able to hold on and choke him out. Rigor mortis had set in by the time I took the picture below. If I was able to stretch his body out he would have definitely been over 18 inches in length from tail to snout. By now you may realize that he was not a mouse at all, he was a rat! He is now buried in the backyard under a large brick.
Suffice to say, there was a lot going on in that email and, for once, I didn’t know how to respond. After much deliberation, I decided to spare him a lecture about tetanus shots and infectious disease. No doubt his wife, a woman I like to call Saint Rena, already covered all that when he came clomping up the basement stairs with no feasible explanation for how he got a puncture wound from a washing machine. And so, I decided that the best thing to do was to speak from the heart:
Tom. You have less sense than a house cat.
I thought about adding, Please do not send emails to my work account any more, but figured it wasn’t worth it. I don’t really have a problem mixing business and pleasure. It’s more that I’m worried I’ll lose these gems when I inevitably quit my job for the fourth time.
There are a lot of things that bother me about this situation with the rat, but the one that bugs me the most is that my parents won’t admit how insane it is. My brother has always been seen as the sensible one, even though he’s spent much of his life proving otherwise. As a child, some of his favourite pastimes included riding his bike off a cliff and setting the backyard on fire. In adulthood, he was attacked several times by a swarm of bees while harvesting honey on his side lot. This was around the same time he ignored a case of Lyme Disease and went swimming in the ocean during a tropical storm. Last I heard, his bike doesn’t even have brakes. Keep in mind, these are just the things I know about. Unlike me, my brother does not put his life on the internet, which is probably for the best. I don’t know what would worry me more about his hobbies: death or arrest.
My parents fail to see a problem mostly because my brother is good at math. This drives me absolutely nuts – the way they defer to him on matters big and small, while painting me to be flighty and irresponsible just because I can’t do long division in my head. Last winter, when my mother asked for help logging in to her TGIFridays loyalty account, she seemed reluctant to let me touch her iPad until my brother gave his stamp of approval. “She knows how to work it,” he said as he disappeared into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher or disconnect the gas line. “She can do it,” he added, juggling a set steak knives while balancing a tea kettle on his head.
My grandmother is the same way. Every time I speak to her, one of the first things out of her mouth is that she’s worried about me. I’m not sure why – all I’m doing is living my best life in Europe and sending her postcards every step of the way. But still she insists that she is worried about my desire to one day visit Japan. She does not like the idea of a ferry that goes to Stockholm. Apparently, nothing makes her anxious quite like a well-paying job in Bavaria.
I want to know why this is – why my brother gets a pass on his eccentricity and I do not. I want my family to consider, just for a moment, that my brother is the one throwing cats around and strangling an 18-inch rat and worry about that. I want to know why no one is concerned that he is still buying Ramen noodles in bulk at age 40. Someone please explain why he is allowed to hold the iPad and I am not.
I might feel guilty about sharing this story except that I think my brother wants me to tell it. Actually, I know that. He chose the subject line, “Blog material.” If that’s not permission to post, I don’t know what is.
I can see his point. There is a certain amount of pride that comes from killing an animal by hand. My brother is proud of his work, much like the time that he made a water table for his children by cutting a hole in an old coffee table and inserting a 15-gallon aquarium. Take that, is what my brother always seems to be saying in his emails. I will not hire a professional to do a job that I can do myself. I will not buy your designer toys with their safety standards and quality assurance testing. In this house, we play with saws and glass. We solve our own problems. The world is rough and my children will learn that the hard way. They will know how to defend their food source. They will understand the meaning of “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” They will be allowed to touch the iPad only when using it to kill an animal that can wipe out two-thirds of the population of Europe.
By the way, I am fairly certain that my brother knows about the plague, as he does rabies and tetanus. He has a master’s degree in engineering. That’s not medicine, but it’s still science and I imagine they taught him more about infectious disease than we covered over in the liberal arts arena.
Still, I have some nagging doubts. Maybe my brother doesn’t know how dangerous it is to handle a rat of any kind but especially one that is, by his own admission, behaving pretty suspiciously. Maybe, as an engineering student, he never had the chance to read Camus. Perhaps he hasn’t had the good fortune to cross paths with a travel doctor who accurately sized him up as a person who likes to pet stray dogs (or, in his case, strangle wild rodents) and recommended the rabies vaccine as a preventative measure. Maybe Saint Rena didn’t get through to him this time.
When I suggest to my brother dial it back and act with at least as much foresight as a cat, he waved me off.
What was I supposed to do, let that rat keep eating my Ramen!? My brother replied to my email.
Well… yes, actually. And then go upstairs and call a professional, I wrote back.
Call a professional? And spend upwards of $100 for something I can take care of myself for little more than a small puncture wound and a potential case of tetanus and/or rabies? I don’t think so!
I wrote back. Speaking from personal experience, the rabies vaccine – if you get all 3 doses – will run you at least $300, so you’re already behind. And you should definitely get it because once you see symptoms, it’s no longer treatable and it results in death 100% of the time. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Like I said, I’m the sensible one.
UPDATE: You asked for pictures of the rat and I am delivering… but because it is gross, I am making it available only after a fair amount of scrolling. Roll at your own risk.
So not the point, but this bacon grease for popcorn thing has blown my mind!
I disagree – this is totally the point. If you were going to take one thing from this post, that should be it.
You literally just EXACTLY described my families’ attitudes about me and my brother. My family consistently acts as if the fact that I have survived to this point and managed to raise a happy, healthy, wonderful daughter on my own as an inexplicable miracle while my brother can do no wrong. I have an advanced degree, have had a professional career for 10 years, moved away on my own long ago, own my own home, pay my own bills and still they act as if I’m incompetent and it’s just by sheer luck that I’ve made it this far. It’s Infuriating!
Oh, I’m so sorry. I understand. Every time I got a job or made a move, my parents always responded with “NOW JUST STAY THERE!” like it was an accident that I got as far as I did and I should just count my blessings. Obviously, I’m glad I disregarded that advice and I’m happy to hear that it seems like you did too. It really is a shame to know that someone else is wrong, but you keep listening anyway. But it is what it is and our parents are human and they do they best they can and 100 other things I’m sure you’ve been told before, most of which are true. I’m glad you made it.
I laughed out loud through the entire reading of this post. This surpasses even the “wolf stick” in your ‘Thin Ice’ post. Also, I have follow-up questions. 1. Where is the picture of the rat? 2. How do you pronounce “milk”? We need you to spell it phonetically. 3. “But I was able to hold on and choke him out” is the best sentence I’ve read all day. (not so much a question as a comment) 4. Doesn’t everyone use bacon fat to make popcorn? 5. Did you know you are like a less depressing Jeannette Walls?
1. Now included as a bonus photo at the end of the post.
2. “Melk” rhymes with elk, the mammal. Sometimes my friends mimic my accent and ask me if I want “malk” in my coffee and I respond with the most un-Appalachian answer there is, which is “Oat, if you have it.”
3. I agree, although it could be improved upon so that if it is used as a pull quote – such as it is in this case – the reader knows what living being is being strangled.
4. NO. This past Christmas, my boyfriend translated a side conversation his mother was having with another family member about what to do with fat from a ham and I jumped right in saying, “I save it to make popcorn!” They both gave it a beat and then one of them said, “We were really just wondering if it should be thrown away as trash or in the bio bin.” And then, because Finns are polite, the other one said, “Where did you get that idea?” And I said, “I believe the Great Depression.”
5. Am I? Am I still? :)
Seriously, thanks so much for the shout out on Twitter and FB. Really appreciate it.
Every single one of those answers surpassed my expectations. Sigh. My day is complete. And you are welcome, my fren!
And here I always thought he was one of the sensible adults among the BHHS crew. Which I suppose implies one of two things… so I’m still not really sure which conclusion to draw.
All things relative!!
Great post – and here’s to crazy brothers! Sticking a penny in the electrical outlet on a dare, trying to teach my dog to swim by throwing her in the pool in February, answering my home phone “Mahoney Penitentiary” (my MIL loved this one)! Luckily he’s bad at math…
Well happy national siblings day to you too! I am so jealous that your brother is bad at math :D :D
Thanks for reading – xx
😀
This post alone allows me to continue not regretting having a brother of any age. He is cute, though.
great photos, especially the reflected building in the street puddle. that’s a stunner.
Well, to be clear, in case it didn’t come through in the post, my brother is kind of awesome. He has questionable judgment and little to no common sense, but he comes in handy. For example, he lets me send my mail to his house and sometimes loans me a sports car with a malfunctioning anti-theft system. In conclusion: THANK GOD FOR BROTHERS.
Oh my goodness… Miriam was so right. I love your blog. You are a great writer and freaking funny!!
<3 back at you. Thanks to Miriam!
1. Are you one of those people who says “melk?” because I grew up with those people. Those. People.
2. And oh my god why is your brother strangling rodents with his bare hands?! Normally I’m never one for trusting a cat, but TRUST THE DAMN CAT, DUDE.
1. YES.
2. YES.
Melk. I always get weird looks when my Pennsylvania comes out in words like that!
Also, our brothers would get along well. Favorite children, good at math, zero common sense. I’ll take the common sense, thank you very much. :)
:) Melk 4—> Hope you are well. I’ll take what you’re having!
Just landed on your page and laughed my ass off! As your neighbor from “up the line” I thought “melk” was a Scranton thing. Incase you didn’t know, according to some stupid web survey Scranton has the second worst accent in the country (right after South Boston…luck us). Nothing wrong with showing your roots every once in awhile! Also, your brother sounds like mine!
oh I’m so glad! thanks for stopping by… I embrace my PA accent. Hope you do too.