Adolescence

Thank the gods, my manager is back from vacation. Boy, I never thought I'd hear myself say that, even in my head.... just goes to show what a completely incompetent assistant manager can do to a person.

I had dinner at mom and dad's last night, and we played Scrabble after, or should I say that they both royally kicked my ass. I just got the worst letters all night! At one point I actually had 6 vowels and a "z". "zuu"! "uzo"! "zeo"! Right.

Helped my little brother study his geometry last week and he called me the next day to let me know that he got an A, which I thought was sweet. I can still bisect a parallelogram with the best of them, I guess. So, Ben, if you do take any math classes I can help you too. But anyways.

My little brother is growing up, which is really funny. (For us, not for him. It must suck to be the youngest sometimes.) He's shot up to almost my height--and I'm 5'7"--but we were getting used to that. Now I can put my arm around his shoulders instead of resting my chin on the top of his head like I used to do. He's got that awkward adolescent thing going where he wants to be hugged but doesn't want to appear to want to at the same time. The only solution to this is to grab him in a bear-hug and call him munchkin, whenever the mood strikes; 4 times out of 5 he'll be glad and the fifth time he'll be, "what the hell, you just hugged me five minutes ago! Get off me!"
But now, now his smooth baby skin is erupting into adolescence as well with the arrival of the first zit. (Sound the fanfare here.) It's just so weird for me because of the age difference; I was ten when he was born; I've changed his diapers, everything. A year from now and he'll be in a totally different place. He and I are much more similar to each other than KK is to either of us, both in looks and in temperment. He looks a lot like I did at that age but, you know, a guy. So, it's all weirdness. I miss my little brother.