Odd notions the ties that bind family
A lot of mail comes in about this column, most of it is positive. A few loyal readers correct my grammar, geography and answers to the Christmas Quiz, but the only hate mail I get is from Brother X.
Brother X does not like it when I mention him. He complains when I describe his accordion playing. What Brother X doesn’t get is that only Brother X and I know who Brother X is. His name never gets referenced in the column, nor does Mrs. X, Son of X or Daughter of X. Not even Dog of X. Far as I know, there aren’t many Chronicle readers back in X-ford, and the few who do see my articles are unlikely to connect this 67-year-old man with the boy who peed his Peter Rabbit costume in the kindergarten play at St. Anthony of Padua.
Fact of the matter is that he is not the interesting sibling. Brother Not-X is.
Brother Not-X got his moniker when he refused to show up for Zane’s adoption because airplanes were too dangerous. Brother Not-X doesn’t fly and hasn’t had a valid driver’s license since 1971. The only mass transportation he trusts is the railroad, and then, only if the car doesn’t have air conditioning. He spent a year in Adak, Alaska, and swore that he would never be voluntarily cold again.
The smartest of the three, Brother Not-X quit Queens College in 1966. Forty years later, on a lark, he earned a bachelor of nescience degree from the International University of Nescience in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Nescience, I later learned, is the study of ignorance. The final exam consisted of one multiple choice question online. Either answer was acceptable.
He took a job with Ma Bell and worked for it for a little over a year. His union went on strike, and Brother Not-X so much enjoyed not working that he never again worked for more time than it would take to get unemployment benefits.
Brother Not-X got married on May 19, 1975, the only day in my entire life that I wore an orange-ruffled shirt. His wife stopped living with him less than a year later, but Ms. No-Longer-Mrs.-Not-X refused to divorce him because he made such a good tax deduction. Year, after year, on May 19, he asked for the separation, but it wasn’t for another 20 years that she met someone she loved more than her dog, and thus made the non-marriage official. To this day, Brother Not-X celebrates his Divorceaversary.
Brother Not-X collects stray theories, such as why horses should wear sneakers and how you shouldn’t wear sunglasses, because your eyes actually need ultraviolet rays.
The Paulsons have made a tradition of urban myths. Pop used to put WD-40 on his joints, and Nurse Vivian told him that the true cure for arthritis is “exactly three golden raisins soaked in gin.” They both insisted on two ginger snaps each day, so that they wouldn’t “get dizzy.” And that blackberry brandy cures just about anything.
My husband, Brian, commented that I was as eccentric as the rest of the Paulsons. Like Brother Not-X, I collect odd fancies, like how hydrogen peroxide is healthy for you because of the free oxygen, or that if you put a dryer sheet in a dirty frying pan it makes the food stop clinging to the utensil. These are things we accept, without having any real proof.
Family is just that. It’s the things we believe together. Brother X, Brother Not-X and I couldn’t agree on questions as basic as whether there is an intervening God, and if there is, then why did He allow Donald Trump? But all three of us will tell you that Nurse Vivian baked the best apple pie because she wouldn’t touch the crust with her fingers.
Family is still like that in the outer, outer, outer Excelsior. We still embrace our nescience: Zane believes that if the statue of St. Jude turns around, something bad will happen. Aidan believes that Krypto avoids the office because of the ghost. And whoever gets the Kennedy half dollar in the barmbrack on St. Patrick’s Day will have luck the rest of the year. My husband comes from a non-eccentric family. They make them that way in Maine. He even suggested those raisins “don’t do a damn thing for arthritis.” But the truth of the matter is that I do it because it reminds me of Nurse Vivian. And because I prefer the taste of Tanqueray to that of spray lubricant. In vodka veritas.
Brother Not-X collects stray theories, such as why horses should wear sneakers.