A Girl Named Michael: How We Met - How to Let Your Batshit Crazy Brother Help You Get Married

Today I have a very very very special guest blogger. Its some one I have known for more years than I am willing to admit out loud (*cough High School*cough). he is also very worried about what I may or may not say in my introduction....I promised I would not say anything his wife could hold against him in divorce proceedings. So I will just say he is one of my favorite people and even after all these years he still makes me laugh so hard I get stomach cramps....Please say hello to my friend Patrick.

Oh yeah Pat wanted me to add a disclaimer that for today and today only I am nor responsible for the content of my blog.

My good friend MJ asked me if I would write a guest post for her blog. Ok, actually, her exact words were: “I was wondering if you would be willing to impart some of your mad ninja wisdom on my readers and do a guest post on my blog. Please say yes.” Who could say no to that??

So I said yes. I mean, obviously, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting there subjecting yourself to this. And so, as sort of a parallel to her “How to Date Your Best Friend’s Ex” post, I humbly present the following:

How to Let Your Batshit Crazy Brother Help You Get Married

(I came up with that title all by myself)

Let us turn the proverbial Wheel of Time back about 9 years. Picture, if you will, a young, handsomely tanned, rather muscular young man with white teeth, a winning smile, abs upon which you could grate cheese, and a killer butt.

Now let’s picture me. (I’m Grim, by the way. Hi! How are you?). I was living in a one bedroom apartment, peacefully enjoying my bachelorhood, and when I say peacefully, I mean trying to figure out how to kill my neighbors who thought the whole complex would enjoy hearing ranchero music blared at full volume at three in the morning.

I work during the day as a government nobody (ninja by night) and found myself, one day, peacefully enjoying the conversation between two female coworkers who were discussing the unpleasantries of a mammogram. And when I say peacefully, I mean…well, never mind.

I look to my right, out the window, hoping to find something that will hold my attention until the two elephantine masochists are done commiserating, and this is what I see staring back at me:

Ok ok, not exactly that. I mean there was no shotgun. The rest is pretty spot on though.

It occurs to me that I’m staring at my batshit crazy brother S____, who, rather than wave like a real human being, gives me a “bro nod”. I look back to my left…sure enough; the Pachyderm Princesses are still there discussing breast flatulence. I look back to my right…batshit crazy brother. Tough choice, really, but in the end, family won out.

Now, understand that I hadn’t seen or heard from S____ in about three years. He was still wearing the same clothes though, and he’d brought a friend, whose name was Bob. I’m not sure Bob was actually alive. S____ says to me, “Hey!!! It’s my birthday next week! We should go do something for my birthday!! ‘Cause it’s next week!” I looked up this phrase in my S____-to English translation book and it said, “I would like you to buy me something.” Ok, fine, I thought. A brother is still a brother, right?

S____ goes on to tell me where he’s living and what time I should come pick him up. Bob stood there and stared open-mouthed at a smudge on the window.

We agree on the time and place, and I go back inside where there are now three coworkers standing in a small semi circle and looking very concerned.

“Are you ok?” One of them asks.

“Fine. Why?”

“Well, we saw you out talking to those two transients and were wondering if you were ok.”

“Oh, them. Yeah, one of them is my brother. I’m not sure the other one was actually alive.”

The look of horror on their faces was truly magnificent. Whether for implying that my brother was a transient, or that he might be best friends with a zombie, I’ll never know. Either way, people don’t talk to me much at work anymore and that’s ok.

During the following week, S____ called me three times a day and left a message each time. I told him, after the first day, that I couldn’t always answer my phone at work and that if he wanted to talk, one message would do just fine as I would get back to him as soon as I was able. Apparently, he thought I was lying. One thing he did ask me was if I had had a crush on a certain girl in high school. I answered that, no, I had a crush on a different girl. “Are you sure?” he says.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I’d remember which girl I was too much of a puss to ask out. Thanks for the reminder, though.”

He goes on to inform me that he’s staying with a girl whose best friend apparently had a crush on me in high school. My immediate reaction to this was to think to myself, Well that’s nice, where the hell was she when I was sitting at home every Friday night drowning my sorrows in Taco Time and Super Nintendo??

So I go to this girl’s house and pick up S____ and we head out to take on the town. Taking on the town consisted of getting Mexican food and heading to the Sportsman’s Warehouse where, of all the things he wants me to buy him, he picks out an 80 dollar water purification straw thing meant for wilderness survival. The gift that keeps on drinking, I suppose.

With nachos and salsa coursing through our veins, we spent the rest of the day terrorizing the city with our flatulence and threatening gang members with S____’s water purification straw thing. We were two crazed single men, rampaging through a sleepy town till the wee hours. And by the wee hours, I mean 9 PM.

We got back to where he was staying and he decides we should watch a movie. – You know, as I’m sitting here writing this, it occurs to me that this is all sounding like a really horrific date. I’m calling my therapist in the morning—

Apparently while we were watching whatever movie it was, the owner of the house calls up her best friend, Sarah, and tells her that I’m over there right now! (SQUEEE!)

A little background on Sarah: I had known her since Junior High. We had a science class or two together and hung out in the same circles. We sat next to each other in a science class in High School and I remember that she had a nice ass. But that was ten years in the past.

So, as I’m sitting there, in walks Sarah wearing this…shirt. I should say that it was a shirt in the strictest sense, and we’ll just leave it at that. We start to talk and eventually we all end up on the front porch just talking. I’m not sure she was ever able to make sense of whatever I was telling her, because I think I kept stopping and trying to remember what the hell I was saying. You see, she was…sitting…a certain way to maximize the shirt’s full potential.

This is a hint, right girls? I mean, I would have preferred a neon sign that pointed at her and read: “PLAYGROUND OPEN. THIS MEANS YOU!” but I figured this was all I was going to get.

I called her up a day or so later and asked her out. For various reasons, her gay roommate being one of them, we ended up going out sooner than originally planned. The plan was, of course, to have nothing serious. We were old school friends just getting together to hang out, right?

I picked her up and we went to Olive Garden. Yeah, I know it’s cliché, but I was hungry so stuff a breadstick up your ass, ok Paisan?

After dinner, we walked back to my car and she runs up next to me and takes my hand. This is friendship?? It’s at this moment in time, and I want you all to know this, that some neuron in my brain fired that has never fired before, and I decided that I would do something “smooth.” I have never been known to be “smooth” or to have “smooth” moments. Ok, there was that one time at Belch Canyon, but that was more of a “creepy smooth” sort of thing. Said canyon was named as such after my “creepy smooth” moment. And let me just say, guys…if you EVER find a woman who is physically turned on by your ability to belch so loud that it echoes off a canyon wall, DO NOT LET HER GO! I’m not even sure such a girl exists, but I’m sure the government could spend a couple billion trying to find out. I digress…

Sarah and I drove all over the state and chatted and flirted. My “smooth” plan was now perfected.

When I finally got tired of driving, or the car was almost out of gas, I’m not sure which, I took her home. She figured her gay cousin had finally passed out and it was safe to enter. I walked her to her door and she invited me in to chat for a minute. We chatted and I asked her out again, to which she agreed…and then came my “smooth” plan.

Remember we had stated to each other that this was just two friends going and hanging out. But, the gauntlet had been thrown when she held my hand! I had been one-upped and would not stand for it! So, yes, that’s right, I grabbed her, planted my lips against hers and pressed her up against the cupboard. After a minute, I let her go, said good night and walked out, just like that.

Ohhhh I cackled all the way to my car! I was more pleased that I had caught her off guard than that she had willingly let me kiss her! I was EVIL with a capital AWESOME! And the best part???

IT WORKED!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!

She went to work the next day and COULDN’T FIGURE IT OUT!!

“ HE SAID HE WANTED JUST FRIENDSHIP!!! WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???? “

Our next date proceeded as planned, and the next, and the next. We just couldn’t see enough of each other. I began finding strange female artifacts in my apartment. I went into my bathroom to get ready for work one morning and found a small purple tool rack of some sort, sitting on my counter. It appeared to be made to hold brushes of some sort.

You know that moment in plot driven movies where the hero finally discovers the source of his betrayal, and you see his face slooowly change as the truth finally dawns on him? This is what I saw my face doing in the mirror. My brain then said, “What the??? We’re in a relationship!!! RED ALERT! EVASIVE MANEUVERS!”

But it was too late for me. When she beat me to my apartment and cooked a four item dinner for me and had it waiting when I got home…I was finished. She had me. I surrendered. Gladly, mind you.

We were engaged within three months, and were married in another nine. We just celebrated our eighth year together and haven’t even tried to strangle each other yet.

I suppose the moral of the story (sorry for the length, but I did warn Mj that I can get long winded when making fun of people) is that you just never know when life is going to say to itself, “Hey, that guy needs a little help. We need to figure out how to gently nudge him down the correct path, because he just doesn’t seem to know what the hell he’s doing anymore.” And then one day you think you’re doing everything right, and BAM!

Enter batshit crazy brother, stage right.

Oh yeah….I made Sarah keep the “shirt.”