My brother is growing up and buying his a house (with assistance) and I’m mourning/celebrating his imminent departure.  I looked around the house, joyed at the crap he’d take with him, especially the things that were my mother’s that he took over, like the curio for porcelain filled with shot glasses or stereo cabinet that nicely holds 3 rifles, 2 shotguns and enough ammo to stop a smallish epidemic of the Rage.  I hope he takes the television he destroyed innocently enough by repeatedly smashing helicopters into it during his “things that fly with blades spinning parallel to the floor” phase which was succeeded by his “things that fly with blades spinning perpendicular to the floor” phase.  The latter took up much room and our pool room is now a graveyard of Styrofoam and scale appropriate hack jobs or so I’m told.  I didn’t realize that when a plane’s tail falls off it’s reattached with a 18 inch wide piece of cellophane tape and girded with logs or what ever a scaled up bamboo skewer would be.

But the things I’ll miss the most are the odd periods of excitement/terror that accompanied my brother discovering some new problem or situation in the house that was best fixed by a large calibre handgun.  Today’s was “don’t be alarmed if you hear a loud bang *holds up revolver* but the pumpkin has to die”.  Little did I know that the proper tool to open a pumpkin to retrieve seeds was not a pearing knife but a Smith & Wesson.  Who knew?