The Brother Destroyer

How do I know I’ve turned into an old man? I asked for J Crew pocket t-shirts for my birthday. That was it. No matter how hard Diana prodded, I’d just mutter, “J Crew pocket t-shirts,” and then go back to hiking up my pants and complaining about local government and teenagers’ hairstyles.

Thankfully, Diana wouldn’t take “J Crew pocket t-shirts” as an answer and surprised me with a visit from my brother Steve over Memorial Day weekend! Having him in town was better than a whole drawer full of J Crew Pocket T-Shirts. Even the ones that look like they’ve been worn by someone who actually works for a living and then sent to me.

He arrived late Friday night, well after the boys were in bed.

Sunday morning when they woke up at 5:55am, I made the mistake of telling Elijah and Luca that their long missed uncle was sleeping in their very house. I spent the next two hours fending off their surprisingly organized attacks on our guest room.

Eventually Steve did open the door and accepted their onslaught. Eli was positively giddy at seeing his uncle. Luca was a little more skeptical. I don’t think he remembered how much we look alike and was quite disturbed his dada doppelganger wore glasses. Steve had to walk around blurry vision-ed to keep Luca from bursting into tears.

Steve, Elijah and I traveled to Mork and Mindy’s hometown of Boulder to have lunch and visit the Crocs store and we spent a delightful afternoon drinking beers and playing in the Luca Car.

And then Steve destroyed our house.

Steve and I went out for beers after dinner. So many beers that the idea of coming back to our house and watching the “Family Guy” Star Wars parody sounded like a great idea.

As Steve figured out how to turn the TV on in the guest room, I suggested officially grabbing one too many beers from the fridge. Steve heartily agreed. I took one step into the kitchen and squished into 2 inches of piping hot water. I noticed water gushing from behind our dishwasher. The hot water line had burst.

Unfortunately, the water gushing wasn’t limited to our kitchen. We had a miniature waterfall in our basement as well. Thankfully (knock on soggy drywall) it was isolated to our laundry room and not on our sons’ heads.

But Steve spent is final day in Denver watching our landlord pace our house, biting his nails to the quick.