He Kept Me in Stitches

Tomorrow, May 24, has been designated "Brother's Day." Since I do have a brother--older, much older than I (and he just yesterday celebrated his birthday)--I guess I'm obliged to do him the honor of writing something about him. (Brace yourself, Dale!)

I know he is reading this. He reads all of my posts just so he can rib me by pointing out all of my typos. He gets great satisfaction from pointing out mistakes overlooked by an editor. (I was a senior technical editor with Lockheed Martin Energy Systems when they managed the Oak Ridge facilities, and then I freelanced for many years after that.)

But all that aside, I must admit certain noteworthy things about my brother.

First, he literally kept me in stitches when we were growing up together. I mean the cat-gut type of stitches, wound-closing sutures.

The first time was one night after Mother had dressed us for church and sent us out to play until she and Daddy were dressed and ready to go. "And don't you boys get dirty!" she demanded.

What could possibly go wrong?

Dale apparently came up with the idea for the "game" we would play while we waited. He was always the originator of ideas; I was merely the innocent (some people would say gullible) follower. Don't older brothers always know best? He would chase me up the steps of the concrete back porch. I would jump off the porch and then race back up the steps while he tried to catch me.

We played several rounds of that (enough to get our shirttails hanging out), and then he caught me. Just as I jumped from the porch, he grabbed the back of my shirt collar. I hung suspended like that for long enough to think I was strangling to death. That's when I emitted a choked cry that was audible all the way to our parents' bedroom on the opposite corner of the house.

Mother, recognizing the cry as more than that which comes from normal sibling squabbling, came running.

When Dale heard her hurried footsteps, he let go of my collar, and gravity took over. I fell backward, striking my head on the edge of the concrete porch. It didn't give, but my scalp did. We didn't make it to church that night. We visited the ER instead, and I returned home with 18 stitches.

The next occasion on which Dale was credited with giving me stitches was the clear result of our disobedience. Our parents had repeatedly told us not to ride double on Dale's bicycle. (I was still limited to my oversized tricycle.) But one day we violated that rule with predictable consequences.

We had been playing with Doug, a neighbor boy, at his house about a quarter mile from our house. When it came time to return home, Dale and Doug mounted their bikes and headed out. Not wanting to walk home by myself, I raised a hue and cry, and again Dale had an idea: we could double on his bike with me sitting sidesaddle on the bar in front of the seat.

Incidentally, Dale and Doug had been wearing football helmets as we played, and they still had them on as we headed down the hill toward home. My head was bare. Why would the smallest kid need a helmet?!

As we raced down the road toward our driveway, which was near the middle of a curve, I yelled joyfully, "We're going like the wind!"

Dale ordered, "When we get to the curve, lean into it."

I was just a dumb kid. I didn't know what leaning into the curve meant. I did what I thought that meant, and my right foot entered the spokes of the front wheel. The bike stopped. Dale and I kept going. He took a high trajectory and landed, rolling and scooting, on the hot, tar-bubbling road. I took a lower flight pattern and made a hard landing, hitting the road on my chin.

Mother, working in the kitchen, heard the crash and our cries and came running. She did a mother's triage and ascertained that I was the more seriously injured victim and carried me all the way back to the house, plopped me onto the kitchen counter, and tried to clean the dirt and tar from my bleeding chin. She finally admitted defeat and took me to the ER. Three more stitches.

I later got 10 more stitches when I was scalped by a Wolf's Head Oil sign thrown by a neighbor boy. But Dale had an alibi for that incident and was not charged.

Despite these and other traumatic consequences of following Dale's lead, I must admit that I envied--and continue to envy--some of his finer qualities.

He is and has always been a net freak. When we built model cars, his were always immaculate works of precision and beauty; mine were messy, glue and paint everywhere except where the should have been. Moreover, he put his models together without ever reading the instructions. I pondered my instruction sheets meticulously and still messed mine up.

Dale's closet, clothes drawers, and school supplies were always neatly and logically organized; mine were an unsightly pile. Even today, one could eat off the floor of his garage. Every tool, ladder, electrical cord, and gadget is right in its place. Even his Keurig drawer is alphabetically arranged by coffee type, and the print on the labels is neatly aligned as if he had used a straightedge (which he actually might have done).

More enviable yet, however, is his self-confidence. I marveled at his confidence even when we were kids. He could do anything, even if he'd never done it before, and he was never afraid to try something new. He drove a truck before he could reach the pedals. He reduced a steep bank along the curve in our driveway using our grandfather's Farmall tractor without first asking Daddy. He lay brick. He took on all sorts of jobs he'd never done before--and succeeded at them.

I, on the other hand, was always reticent, diffident, and reluctant to try anything new. I hated being that way and envied Dale for not being like that.

But I looked up to him, tried to imitate him, wore his old clothes he had sent back home from college, and was proud when people mistakenly called me by his name instead of my own. I would forever be known, not as Dennis but as Dale's brother. Although that sometimes was a good thing, but other times it worked the opposite way. After all, some people knew a different side of Dale!

I still look up to him. He might have kept me in stitches, but he also gave me targets to shoot for, ways for self-improvement. For example, as I've admitted to him, whenever I enter my doctor's office for our "annual chat" (a.k.a., my physical), I "become Dale." I transform from reticent, reluctant, diffident Dennis into loquacious, confident Dale. When I leave his office, I resort back to the real me.

We're two totally different personalities. He's a world traveler; I'm a homebody. He's game to try new things; I'm a rut dweller. He can sing and play various instruments; I can't carry a tune in a bucket and gave up trying to play even a jaw harp. Like Will Rogers, he's outgoing and able to talk to anyone about anything; I'm shy and struggle to carry on frivolous conversations, especially with strangers, and I'm more a listener than a talker.

But we're still brothers. And I love him--in spite of all the stitches he so generously supplied me.