TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 58

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 13, 20000000000006


Dear Everyoneofyou,

	Today is my little brother's birthday. 
He is 52.  What a kid.  I should post a 
photograph of him gurning on the Banyan Tree 
site, but I don't know how.  You'd all love it. 
He's showing his bottom row of teeth, and it's a 
close-up so you can see every one of his nose 
hairs.  He'd approve by the way.  We used to 
stand in front of mirrors gurning, and sometimes 
make faces at each other from across the table at 
family functions.  If you look at pictures of me 
at the same age as pictures of him, we look very 
much alike.  That becomes dramatic when we're 
making faces.  So today, I go to the electronic 
postcards sites and send him four or five 
ridiculous cards for his enjoyment.  Sympathy 
cards, missing you cards, congratulations on the 
new baby cards, happy birthday grandma cards, 
love you passionately cards.  It's always 
edifying.  This year, I am stuck on what to get 
him for his birthday.  I am completely stumped. 
Usually, I've got a pretty good idea, but not 
now.  I don't even know remotely.  So where will 
I go to shop?  I thought of wrapping up a print 
out of these stories, but then, that's more like 
a curse than a present.  I'll figure it out.

	Figure this out.



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Tiny penis


	When my parents went out for the evening 
at first, it was baby sitters, but after Dana got 
to be thirteen or so, they left us to watch over 
each other.  That's easier said than done.  The 
dynamics were such that if there were no 
controls, Dana might have beat the living 
daylights out of Daniel and me, and we would have 
teased each other to tears.  Nothing would have 
gotten done, and the house would have been in 
disarray when our parents returned.  So, to keep 
order, my mother's clever plan was to assign 
responsibilities for each of us.  Dana would 
report on Tobie.  Tobie would report on Daniel 
and Daniel would report on Dana.  She'd switch 
these configurations around so that debts and 
revenges would not develop.  Everyone, 
eventually, got reported on and reported on 
everyone else.  It worked wonders.  When anyone 
stepped out of line, another would declare it a 
reportable offense, and the transgression would 
stop in its tracks.

	Mom would leave T.V. dinners for us, or 
frozen chicken pot pies, and we'd prepare our 
dinner ourselves.  Then after a fashion we'd 
clean up, and the rest of the evening was a free 
for all until bed time, which was never defined 
very well.  When it was time for Daniel to go to 
sleep, he would always start out in my parents' 
bed, on my mother's side.  Dana would claim to be 
in charge and would virtually sit on his chest 
until he lay still and promised to sleep.  But 
then he'd get up after she'd left the room, and 
turn on the television.  She'd been listening at 
the door for any small infraction and she'd run 
back in, and leap on his chest all over again. 
This cycle could go on for a while, and he'd beg 
to have me put him to bed.  When Dana got tired 
of monitoring him in the leap and sit fashion, 
she'd finally hand him over to me.  I'd go in 
there and tell him a story or let him watch 
television for ten minutes on the promise that 
he'd go to sleep right afterwards, and that 
always worked.

	One evening, he called me in and he had a 
worried look on his face.  There was even some 
embarrassment on it.  He pulled back the covers 
and showed me how his little tiny penis was 
standing up straight and it was hardened.  He 
didn't know what this was, and neither did I.  So 
we tried to push it down.  I pressed it down 
against his groin, and it just stood right back 
up.  I tried again.  It sprang up again.  So I 
tried holding it down for a longer period of 
time.  Daniel's look of worry did not leave his 
face.  What was wrong with his penis?  What we 
were doing was more than innocent, it was 
clueless.  No matter what we did, whether he held 
it down, or I did, the little thing kept popping 
back up, and eventually we had to agree that it 
was doing him no harm, no matter what it was, and 
our efforts to subdue it were ineffective.  So we 
gave up.

	It was years before I figured out what it 
was.  And at that point, I'm sure it had other 
ideas to which I was not privy.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net