Brotherly Pranks, Part One: The Sandwich

It was a Saturday afternoon, the year was 1977.  My brother Eric and I were in the kitchen whipping up a couple of baloney and cheese sandwiches for our lunch.  Mom was at work, and Dad was in the cellar working on something.  Our youngest brother Bobby was lying on the couch, recovering from the common cold.

"Dad!  Can I have lunch?" Bobby yelled.  It was a small house.  Voices carried, even down to the cellar.

Dad called up, "Are you guys in the kitchen?"

"Yeah!" I hollered back.

"Make Bobby a sandwich, would ya?"

There's no way to sugar-coat this.  At the age of seven, our brother Bobby was a little shit.  Being the youngest, he took a lot of crap from me and Eric, but he dished it out pretty well too.  And now, with the support of our father, he had us doing his bidding.  He was more than eager to take advantage of the situation.

"You heard him,  slave boys.  Make my lunch."

Eric and I looked at each other.  "I'm not making it, not if he's gonna be a jerk," said Eric.

"Don't look at me, I'm not making that little twerp a sandwich."

"And hurry up about it!"  Bobby ordered.

Eric slammed his green army hat to the floor, and stomped over to the top of the cellar stairs.  "Dad, Bobby's being a jerk!  Do we really have to make his lunch?"

"Just do it, please!" Dad replied.

"Yeah, slave boys," said Bobby.  "Just DO it!"

Eric came back to the kitchen.  "This sucks."

By this point, though, a thought had occurred to me.  Dad didn't exactly say what KIND of sandwich to make for our smart-ass little brother.  "So, Eric," I said.  "Just what kind of sandwich do you think Bobby would like?"

"I don't care, baloney?"

"Okay, anything else you want to add?"

Eric's eyes narrowed, and a smirk crawled across his face.  "Uh, yeah, I think he might like some peanut butter on it, too."

I spread a thin layer of Skippy on the one slice of bread.  "What next?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Eric.  "Maybe some mustard?"

Out came the Heinz Spicy Brown.  We took a quick inventory of the refrigerator.  Catsup.  Horseradish.  American cheese.  Grape jelly.  Hey, with a name like Smucker's . . .

By the time we finished, Bobby's sandwich was loaded up pretty good.  We went extra heavy on the horseradish around the edges of the bread, so that first (and probably only) bite was going to be a doozy.  Then we used lettuce leaves and a couple extra slices of baloney to make the sandwich look "normal".  We put it on a paper plate, garnished it with some Lay's potato chips, and delivered it to our sickly brother.

"About time, slave boys.  Now get me a Dr. Pepper."

"Anything you say, your majesty," I answered, stifling a chuckle.

Eric and I went back into the kitchen and waited.

"AAAAGH!  What is this?!?  This is DISGUSTING!"  Ah, the joys of horseradish.  "DAAAAAAD!"

Our father thundered up the cellar steps.  "What's going on?" he asked.

"They made me a gross sandwich!"

We were still giggling when Dad confronted us in the kitchen.  "What did you guys put on his sandwich?"

"Actually, Dad," said Eric, "it would be easier to tell you what we DIDN'T put on his sandwich.  Milk."

We knew we were in the clear when Dad cracked a smile.  "Okay, okay, maybe he asked for it.  Can you guys make him a baloney-and-cheese-and-nothing-else sandwich now?"

"No bread?" I asked.

"Uh, yeah, bread too."

So we did.  You've never seen a kid eat a baloney and cheese sandwich more carefully.


o

Dad Never Bluffs

Dads don't bluff.

My brothers and I learned this valuable lesson as we were trekking down Interstate 95 on Christmas night, 1979.

Most Decembers of my childhood, we would visit my mom's parents in Orlando over Christmas vacation, leaving on the night of Christmas and returning after New Year's. In the winter of '79, we had been on the road for about five hours when the aforementioned lesson took place.

You see, that year my brothers and I received, courtesy of the "Make Parents Want to Stab Themselves With a Dull Pencil" division of the Milton Bradley Company, a game called "Simon". The object of "Simon" was to repeat, in exact sequence, the beeps, boops, and buzzes (accompanied by multicolored lights) emitted by the jelly donut-shaped game console. We'd been at it since about 5:30 that morning, and when my dad, in a move he would come to regret, said we could bring one toy with us on the trip to Florida, well, Simon was the obvious choice. In the back of the Chevy Nomad we sat, pressing buttons and racking up new high scores into the night.

We beeped our way down the Jersey Turnpike.

We booped through Delaware.

We buzzed past Baltimore.

We even blipped and bleeped across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

In retrospect, and now being a father myself, I have to be honest and say my dad lasted a lot longer than I would have. But even so, somewhere in Virginia we hit DEFCON 1 on the Dad-o-Meter.

"If I hear one more (expletive) beep, I'm throwing that thing to the side of the highway!"

This would be as good a time as any to tell you a little bit about my youngest brother Bobby.

Bobby is five years younger than I am, which made him nine years old that particular Christmas. He is blessed with the gift of humor, the sincere desire to be all things to all people, and a good-natured personality that makes him almost impossible not to like and even harder to get angry at. At age nine he was not, unfortunately, endowed with much of an ability to think things through to their inevitable conclusion. So when Dad made the threat, let's just say that one of us was not on the same page.

"Come on, one more game, it's my turn anyway," Bobby whispered.

"You heard Dad, we have to stop," replied 11-year old Eric. He's the family equivalent of Switzerland.

"Just once. He won't really throw it away," Bobby insisted.

"He might not throw it away, but we'll get in trouble," I added. Keeping it real.

"I think he'll throw it away AND we'll get in trouble," said Eric, keeping it realer.

"Here, let me have it," Bobby said, and grabbed Simon from the van's table. Eric and I just looked at each other. Let the games begin.

BOOP.

Somewhere in Detroit, at Chevrolet's manufacturing plant, there is a man who was responsible for installing the braking system on the 1978 Chevy Nomad. Based on the immediacy with which my father was able to bring the vehicle to a screeching halt on the shoulder of I-95, I am certain that this gentleman at Chevy took his job very seriously, and undoubtedly earned Employee of the Year honors.

The sliding door opened. An outstretched arm and an open hand reached into the back of the van. Without a word, Bobby placed Simon in the hand. The arm withdrew. The door slammed shut.

When we next saw our father, he was standing in front of the van, illuminated only by the headlights. It was almost ethereal. Then, in one fluid, Jenner-esque motion, Dad wound up and discus-flung Simon into the night, abandoned, to beep its final boop in the woods outside Norfolk.

We drove the next 25 miles or so in dead silence, which was only to be broken by two words Eric muttered under his breath."Told ya."