Brotherly Love

When my sisters and I were young, my parents did their best to fulfill all our wants and needs. We always had food on the table, clothes to wear and every summer, although we couldn’t afford elaborate vacations, my parents managed to take us somewhere which required a long, car ride and gave dad plenty of time to yell at us and threaten our lives. One thing we always wanted was a family pet. In 1976, my parents broke down and agreed to get us a dog. We drove out to some woman’s house, where we were to choose our new dog. Upon arriving, we were greeted by 3 cute, Cocker Spaniel puppies. As my sisters and I played with the pups, one of them sat on my leg and proceeded to paint my thigh with a long line of diarrhea…one of the dogs…not one my sisters. This, of course, was the deciding factor for the rest of the family in choosing our dog, as any pup with the good sense to crap on me must be the dog for the Foley’s. We named her Bouncer. For the next few months, we overlooked some of Bouncer’s bad habits; peeing on the floor, begging for food and my personal favorite, after a healthy dump in the yard…the dog…not my sisters…would seek out a nice, clean stretch of carpet and use her front paws to scooch forward, wiping her ass along the way. Lovely. Unfortunately, Bouncer lacked mental toughness and had an adverse reaction to tail pulling, being mounted for pony rides and having Crayolas inserted into openings where Crayolas didn’t belong. I’m pretty sure I’d try to bite someone if they slipped a “Burnt Orange” crayon in my rectum. That’s just me…and Bouncer, as well, so we shipped her off to my grandparents, whom we were quite certain, stopped sticking crayons in dog’s butts several years earlier. I felt bad after Bouncer left us but then I realized my parents had already supplied me with something better than a pet. I had a little sister!

We called her Beth and at every chance given, verbally and mentally tortured her. Maureen, Kathy and I were each born 1 year apart. There was a 4 year gap between Beth and myself, which gave me the perfect opportunity to tease her that her birth and very existence was a mistake. As an older brother, it was not only my right but my duty to make her life miserable and believe me, I seized every opening to do so. I could fill volumes and Beth could spend months on the couch of a therapist, recalling the some of the wonderful, comical abuse she suffered for my entertainment. However, I’ll share with you one incident, which I hold dearest in my heart.

After a family gathering at Maureen’s house, I offered to give Beth a ride home in my new ’87 Pontiac Grand Am. Leaving the protection of my parents and accepting an invitation to be trapped in a car for 45 minutes with me was her first mistake. The ride started out innocently enough but for Beth, things soon turned for the worse. Maureen likes to cook enormous amounts of Italian food. I like to eat enormous amounts of Italian food. Italian food contains enormous amounts of fat and grease. This means one thing for me; an enormous amount of gas. This was the perfect setting. I had an abundant store of gag-provoking, eye-burning flatulence, a naïve, trusting little sister and thanks to General Motors, a control panel at my fingertips, which controlled the access of all the car windows. In a situation like this, timing is everything. Silently, I set free a healthy portion of gas. After waiting a few seconds and sensing she would be sharing in the experience at any moment, I calmly asked her with a puzzled look,

“Do you smell mint?” Now really, how often do you just smell mint? Almost never, so intrigued by my question Beth replied,

“Mint?” Then she followed up her reply with a deep, nasal clearing sniff…the kind where your chest puffs out and shoulders kinda shrug. I knew my timing was perfect and scored a direct hit when I could see the look in her eyes turn to sheer terror. Her lips soured and face wrinkled in disgust. In a panicked whisper she tried to speak, without actually breathing,

“Oh my God!” With her lips shut tight and cheeks puffed out like she was holding back a mouthful of marshmallows, she feverishly attempted to open her window. Eventually, she found the button to operate the window and as it slowly slid down, she stuck her face out into the rushing, cool, night air to catch a breath. I was feeling generous that night and let her get a single gulp of clean air before I utilized my master control and started to raise her window. Like a little kitten’s paws, poking out between the bars of a pet store cage, her fingers desperately darted out the small crack I left open, in a futile attempt to wedge the window back open. It was great!

After the air cleared and I stopped laughing, Beth voiced her objections to my game of “Do You Smell Mint.” As she yelled at me, I started to get a whiff of something, not of my own creation, which was quite fowl. Italian food has enormous amounts of garlic and apparently, Beth had plenty of it. We made a pact for the rest of the ride home. She promised to keep her mouth closed and I promised to keep my other end closed. As we drove in silence, the smell still remained, which truly perplexed me as I could see out the corner of my eye, Beth looking straight forward and not saying a word. After 10 minutes or so, the odor was relentless and refused to weaken. Overcome by the fumes, I apologized to Beth.

“I’m sorry. Whatever that smell is, it isn’t you. You haven’t said a word but I can still smell it. It’s making me sick! I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

For the last 20 minutes of the ride, I sniffed my clothes, cupped my hands over my mouth and checked my breath, hell, I was tempted to look in the backseat for the fly-infested carcass of a rotting wildebeest. I was in agony. I figured it must be me, as Beth was unfazed by any sort of smell. Just before pulling into the driveway, I turned to Beth to; once again, apologize for wrongfully accusing her of having garlic breath. As I looked, I found the source of my discomfort for the past half hour. While stoically peering straight ahead, Beth had contorted her lips and shifted them to the left side of her face. Her lips formed a tight circle, as though whistling, and they were pointed directly at me. Apparently, the entire ride home she had breathed a steady stream of garlic right at my nose, all the while keeping her head perfectly straight. Truly a remarkable feat of body control but even more impressive, the ability to pull it off without so much as a giggle. I wasn’t angry. I was proud!

In retrospect, having a dog would’ve been a lot of hard work. We would’ve had to clean up poop, feed it, bathe it and pay attention to it. Having a little sister was much better. We made mom take care of all that, which left plenty of time for us to torture her.