It's been a while since I've posted, but life got in the way. I also haven't downloaded any pictures from my camera, so I'm going to give you another story. This one is a gem from my mental archive and it's a doozy! I do have full permission to tell this story :)
My brother, J, is 2 1/2 years younger than I am. We shared lots of friends in high school. He and I hung out. We laughed together. We irritated the crap out of each other. We usually had each others best interests at heart. Usually. We kept each others secrets fairly well. So basically, we were pretty close.
And then I graduated from high school. Which is much better than the alternative of not graduating from high school. I ended up going to the local junior college. J and I still hung out, but life was a little different for me in college. I didn't get to hang out with my friends or my brother as much as I would have liked. Research papers grew in length. Tests required cramming the night before.
This story starts on a night in October of my freshman year in college. I was at home, studying for a test on a weeknight. J had left some time earlier in the evening. I can't remember now if I knew who he was with or what he was doing. He came home after our mother was in bed, 11 or midnight. And my butthead of a brother was drunk! And he had been drinking with all of our mutual friends!
Now, I have a jealous streak that runs a mile wide and can be a bit mean when caught off guard.
J did not have the sense to just come home drunk. J came home with all of the evidence of the good time he had had on his face. They had been playing "Drunkopoly," which is Monopoly with the Chance and Community Chest cards changed to different pranks which would have to be done when drawn. "Shave half an eyebrow" was one. In fact, many of the cards required the drawer to shave a body part. I think one had the drawer stripping off their clothes and running out into the street. J ended up coming home with the outside half of each eyebrow shaved, both legs shaved to the knee, both armpits shaved, and one arm shaved. (Looking back on this, they really had a fetish for shaving.)
So there was my brother, drunk and looking stupid and there was me, irritated with my brother because he was drunk and jealous because I hadn't been there. I then did what came naturally to me. (I have a it of a mean streak.) I proceded to convince my gullible brother that he would need to shave the rest of his eyebrows so they would grow back evenly.
Me: J, you're going to need to shave the rest of your eyebrows to make them grow back evenly.
J: Dude! Are you sure?
Me: Dude! Yes I'm sure! I know about these things. I'm a girl. They won't grow back evenly if you don't shave them completely off.
J: Ok.
So J goes to the bathroom. I stayed at the desk in the living room, studying and trying not to laugh. I don't know what razor he used because I don't remember him having to shave his face at the time.
J came out of the bathroom every 30 seconds. Dude, are you sure about this?
Me: Dude, yes. Now go shave so you can go to bed and let me study
Back and forth to the bathroom he went, shaving a quarter inch off of his eyebrows at a time from the outside. We'd repeat the conversation every time. I'm still not sure how I held in my laughter.
J: Amanda!
Me: What?
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, dude! I'm sure! Now go finish shaving and let me study!
You'll have to excuse the prolific use of the term "dude," but it was the late '90's and it was a miracle we had any other words in our respective vocabularies.
J finally came out of the bathroom with his eyebrows completely shaven. I died laughing. I had held in my laughter as long as I could. There was my brother, drunk, with his gorgeous dark tan (of which I am completely jealous!), and the palest skin I'd ever seen where his eyebrows had been!!
Our mother forced him to go to school the next day, perhaps hoping the humiliation would teach him a lesson. Our friends called him "Powder" in reference to the character in a movie that had recently come out, but I never saw the movie so I don't remember the reason for the name.
Little brothers are such a blessing! ;)
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