Weirdos

[cosmolinguist]

Antisocial as he is (to his family), my brother will occasionally volunteer things.

Yesterday as he, my mom and I were driving to Albert Lea to go to the restaurant of his choice for his birthday, he started telling us a story. It was about a guy he and his friend Seth had seen at Wal-Mart the night before, who was apparently going around the store with music blaring out of his headphones. And I think he was singing, too.

Chris made it sound like this is the maddest thing a person can do ... it probably is, in my brother's eyes. He's very sensitive to the behavior of "weirdos," you see. It comes from his false sense of superiority.

As we pulled into the Perkins parking lot, he went on to say that they'd seen the guy in the parking lot when they were in their car and ready to leave. We got out of our car and Chris demonstrated what they'd seen the guy doing: "He was carrying a bag and singing and dancing around like this"—he twirled around with his arms out—"and ... now all those people inside just saw me do that and I'm really embarrassed," he said.

My mom broke out laughing. I thought it was delightful. "And now they're going to go home and tell people, 'I saw this weird guy dancing in the parking lot!' too!" I said. He tried to disappear in the hood of his sweatshirt and made sure to sit in the corner on the side of the booth facing a wall instead of the side facing the rest of the room.

Comments

[melukar.livejournal.com]

1) how old is your brother?

2) your brother would freak if he ever met jessie and i. i'm just saying.

[cosmolinguist]

1) He turned 21 yesterday.

2) Oh, he hates all my friends, and would probably freak at anybody I really like. We're definitely in the "weirdo" category.

[melukar.livejournal.com]

i even embarass jessie in public.

and that takes a lot.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

He sounds like I guy I used to date, who got genuinely spazzed out when I'd dance down the aisle to the grocery store muzak. He once actually said to me: "NO flouncing!! This is a NO FLOUNCING ZONE!!"

*giggle*

C'mon, "flouncing"?

[cosmolinguist]

Someone so normal seems almost worth keeping around for a while, just for the fun of torturing him. It seems rather easy to torture him with silliness ... though if he's the kind of person who'll say a thing like "this is a NO FLOUNCING ZONE," I wonder if he doesn't have some latent silliness there himself.

Re: C'mon, "flouncing"?

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

He definitely did. It was buried deep, but it was there. This is a man who was so anal that he would flip if they didn't have regular pepsi in glass bottles (and who does, anymore). But he was also the same person who wrote a treatise about flaming monkeys, baby-talked to animals, spent 3 months looking for the "perfect" egg-poaching setup, and Superman-leaped into the room once just to impress/amuse me (it worked). I really do miss him, but he got to the point of needing to be drunk all the time just to be the tiniest bit affectionate or lighthearted. Poor guy.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

The best thing to do with people like that is be subtle.
My best friend in 6th form college was *very* different to me - in fact he was secretary of his local Conservative Party branch. Anyway, he got *hugely* embarassed by pretty much everything in the world ever (once when I bought the album This Old Heart Of Mine by the Isley Brothers, which has a typical early-60s cover of two very white people in very large bathing costumes sat on a blanket at the beach, he made me walk on the other side of the road from him because he didn't want to be seen with an album like that), and so I used to try to wind him up very subtly.
The *best* one I found, to cause maximum embarassment, is simply walking along next to them, but once every three steps (often enough to be noticeable, but not often enough that it looks like a disability rather than a deliberate choice) rotate the foot furthest away from them in a very large circle mid-step. The thing about this is, it's definitely noticeable from afar, but anyone walking next to you can go quite some time without noticing you're doing it, and then *they don't know how long they've been walking next to someone doing that*...

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

HEE!! That's evil! I will file that one away for future use...

[modalverben.livejournal.com]

Brothers, sheesh. Men, sheesh for that matter.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, having more than one kid definitely wasn't my idea. But they did it before I was old enough to object.

[rainsinger.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I wish my brother was that easy to embarass.
He's far too laid back.
Gah.

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

you two could trade :)

[cosmolinguist]

I've often offered to trade my brother (and my mom) for my friends' family members. It's odd how few have taken me up on that offer so far ...

[cosmolinguist]

Well, you can have mine, if you want. I'll sell 'im to you cheap!

[comradexavier.livejournal.com]

Where is the rest of the second paragraph?

[cosmolinguist]

Hm, good question! I fixed it now. I thought it'd been there before; I don't know what happened. I'm not anal-retentively perfect, but I do usually check over these things. Oh well, seems no one else noticed either, so that makes me feel better.