My brother was the kind of child who was easily influenced by things he watched on the television or read in a book. When he first saw the Karate Kid, he became obsessed with making up his own form of kung-fu and practicing in his room wearing a pair of pajamas that was made to look like a karate outfit, complete with a black belt. Considering I was the target of many of his newly invented moves, such as the jump-from-the-top-of-the-bunk-bed-and-beat-the-shit-out-of-your-sister-while-saying-HIIIIYYYAAA! move , this was a rather bleak time for me.
When Back to the Future came out, he immediately started begging my Mom for a jean jacket and a padded vest, a pair of sunglasses, and those old school white Nikes with the red stripe on the side. If memory serves me correctly, he got at least the jacket and vest for his next birthday, and although he had already moved on the imitating characters from other movies, he would still put on his get-up every time we watched the movie. He had cowboy boots and a hat to wear when it struck his fancy, and an Indian headdress and rubber tomahawk that my Grandparents brought back from a trip to a reservation years before suddenly wouldn’t leave his head once he began watching a local children’s television program hosted by Chief Halftown, a Seneca Indian who began each show with the greeting: “Ees da sa sussaway!” Although we never knew exactly what that meant, and still don’t, Mike naturally adopted it as his catch phrase for short time.
My parents always indulged our imaginations, and I give them a lot of credit for that. They never told me that in all likelihood I would not grow up to be a professional ballerina during the day and an astronaut at night. I was never discouraged from writing love letters to all the members of the New Kids on the Block and planning what Ralph Maccio and I would name our future children. Just for the record, it would have been Ralph Maccio Jr. for a boy since Ralph seemed like the type to want to pass on his legacy, and Laverne Shirley Macchio for a girl.
Although we were encouraged to dream and wish and create to our little hearts content, there were times that we clearly took it over the limit. For instance, one summer my Mom was out in the backyard hanging laundry on the clothesline to dry, when suddenly she heard giggling and scampering feet coming through the kitchen. Seconds later, the screen door leading to the backyard popped open and there stood my brother, with most of his exposed skin covered with hair. For a few moments she was unable to grasp exactly what kind of catastrophe she was witnessing, until my brother made his hands into a monster’s claw shape, howled, and exclaimed “Look Ma! I’m a werewolf!” Inspired by his recent viewing of Teen Wolf my brother had taken scissors to his head, cut off huge clumps of hair, and then pasted the hair all over himself. A buzz cut and a stern talking to later, my Mom gave us both large cardboard boxes decorated with felt and filled with various crafting items like pipe cleaners, pom-poms, buttons, and construction paper. I think she realized that if we weren’t given a proper medium for expression she was probably risking waking up one morning to find us covered in homemade tattoos that we’d inked from a ballpoint pen and sewing needle.
Still, my brother continued to be extremely effected by all forms of media, which was especially evident in the myriad of career choices that his youthful self planned for the future. One day, when he and his friend Gregory read a children’s book about a graveyard on Halloween, they decided that there was nothing they wanted more in life than to one day become grave diggers. They weren’t at all interested in dealing with the mortuary end of things – the embalming or the funeral arrangements, the soft spoken condolences to the family of the deceased. No, Greg and Mike were blue collar men. They wanted to wear coveralls and bandanas, they wanted dirt under their fingernails and calluses on their hands.
Ambitious and eager to perfect their skills at their future vocation, the two boys started digging. Starting in our sandbox, they soon realized that it lacked the depth a real grave would surely have and quickly became dissatisfied. However, using child sized shovels made out of hard plastic, it was difficult for them to break ground in our newly thawed backyard that Spring. After breaking their entire arsenal of sand shovels and Little Tykes Gardening Set instruments, my Dad reluctantly took one of his own small metal shovels and sawed down the handle to make it more appropriate for his three foot, seven inch frame. Then he took a rubber grip off of an old mop and fashioned it to the handle, and cut the fingers off of an old pair of batting gloves he had in the garage. They were still a little big on my brother, but they gave him the satisfaction of feeling like a real gravedigger. It didn’t take long for Dad to regret modifying the grave digging shuttle for Mike and Greg’s practice digs. Our backyard was soon becoming pock- marked and unsightly. Mounds of dirt full of wiggling Earthworms sat next to shallow holes, abandoned when one of the boys encountered a tree root or got tired of standing in the same place for too long. After a day or two they were ordered to fill in all the holes and relocate to a park down the street, where they spent most of their summer.
The grave digging ambition continued for some time, although the practice decreased in frequency once the boys started school. Mike would doodle headstones and grave markers on his sketch pad, trying to make designs he thought fit the personality of those near and dear to him. My mother was told that he was going to make her a pink heart for her headstone when she died, and on days when he was feeling particularly mean to me he would threaten me with a promise to forget to close my coffin during my burial so that worms could crawl inside and eat my nose. He took his chosen profession very seriously.
My brother is now 24 years old, and he’s had some difficulty deciding on a career. After graduating college a year and a half ago with a degree in International Relations, he took a job in personal finance. Deciding he wasn’t interested in a desk job, he left that position after a few months and has worked in an Irish pub style restaurant ever since. Later this month he’s taking a test to start apprenticing for an electrician’s union, which I’m hoping works out for him. He’ll probably never become a grave digger/ headstone maker and I’ll probably never be a part-time ballerina/astronaut. But having those dreams and parents who let us believe in them made us who we are today – dreamers still.
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