SCOTTY!

SCOTTY! The sound of it being shouted was as familiar to me, as the Shawn Cassidy poster, hanging in my room. When I was growing up, that name was always spewing from my mouth like lava, erupting from my lips in heated globs of anger. You could hear it throughout the house. SCOTTY!

When all that remained of the Captain Crunch Peanut Butter cereal, was an empty box, save the hand scrawled note that said “LOSER” on it -- SCOTTY! When the bathroom door was locked from the inside, and closed accidentally, or my shampoo bottle, which was brand new, was suddenly full of cold water instead. Not to mention the other, more disgusting things he did, like leaving the toilet seat up in the middle of the night. I don’t know how many times I stumbled into the bathroom we shared, bleary eyed, in the dark, just to sit down on the cold, wet base of the bowl. SCOTTY! You could bet that if the single hair, placed between the pages of my diary was disturbed in the slightest, I knew who was to blame.

Scotty never seemed to hear my booming cries of anguish and distress. He would just laugh at me, holding his side and occasionally, rolling on the ground in hysterics. Mom and dad heard me though, constantly, I would get into trouble for yelling at him all of the time. They had no idea what that little gerbil was putting me through. He was three years younger than I was, but it might as well have been ten, as far as I was concerned. He was such a creepazoid; I swore he must have been adopted.

It seemed like he lived to drive me insane. Scotty tortured and tormented me beyond my ability to withstand it. You know how in church the preacher always said that God never gives us anything we can’t handle? Well that preacher didn’t know my Scotty. And if God did, then he must have been a little brother too. When I would finally reach my breaking point, when Scotty pushed me to my absolute limits, I would tear out after him, intending to beat him senseless. He knew it to, because I never caught him, not one time.
He was as fast as one of the little field mice, who lived in our barn. He would get a good distance and stop, letting me almost get him within arms reach, and then he would dart off just as quick as you please, laughing hysterically. The more he laughed, the harder I would chase and the madder I got. He would run into the corn field beside our house. It was just one massive hiding place for him. He knew that once he got in there, I would give up and go home, and eventually forget what I had been so mad about.

Throughout our young lives, he always got the better of me. He would break something, and say I had done it. He would make cow-eyes, at our parents and let that one little tear trickle down his cheek, and I would get grounded. I almost admired him for that technique. I tried it once. I left an apple core on the kitchen counter instead of throwing it in the garbage can. I knew I should have thrown it away, but the full bag had been taken out and whoever did it, (it wasn’t me) had failed to put a new liner in. So I figured he would be the one to get into trouble for not doing his chore, and I left it on the counter.
When my dad saw it, he immediately called me into the kitchen and asked me about it and I stuck my bottom lip out and let it quiver just a little, pointed at Scotty, and said “He must have done it”. Right on cue, that one little tear cascaded down my cheek. My punishment for the apple core, was taking the trash out for a week. I got grounded for three days for lying on my innocent little brother.

My darling brother seemed to delight in seeing me humiliated and or embarrassed, whatever reaction for appropriate for any given circumstances. Once, when I turned twelve years old, he invited himself to my very first slumber party. I was so excited to finally be allowed to have friends over, to spend the night chatting and giggling and eating junk food. We were in the middle of a heated debate about who was cuter, David Cassidy, or Leif Garrett, when in waltzed Scotty, in his pj’s and slippers. It would not have been so bad, except on top of his pajama’s, he donned one of my brand new double “A” training bra’s, stuffed full of toilet paper. The girls all thought it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen, not Scotty in the bra, but me in my scarlet red face. I wanted to die at that moment.

When he wasn’t humiliating me in front of my friends, he would read excerpts from my private diary to his little gruesome buddies. He was known to stick maxi pads on the bottom of his feet, and pretend to ski across the kitchen linoleum, just as Jimmy Donovan and I were sitting down to study for our history test. Of course, Scotty was always there making loud kissing noises, whenever I talked to a boy on the phone. He lived to play tricks on me.

I can still to this day recall every dirty, underhanded, sneaky prank he ever pulled on me. Like the time he spent the entire day down at the creek. He was out of my hair for hours. It was blissfully quiet. I read a book, without getting spit wads thrown at me. I watched whatever I wanted to watch on television, we always fought over The Partridge Family – my choice, and dumb old Barnaby Jones. I don’t know why he loved that stupid show so much. Anyway, on that day Keith Partridge and I had several intimate, private moments. That afternoon when Scotty came home, he was surprisingly sweet to me, even offering to let me take my bath first, a privilege usually reserved for him. I gathered my pj’s and got into my robe and slippers and went into the bathroom. There, to my delight was a hot steamy bubble bath, all ready and waiting for me. I should have known better, but without a second thought, one foot in, two feet in, and luckily for my little brother, before I had a chance to sit down, I became aware with a jolt, that I was not alone in the bathroom. It took him nearly all day to collect enough crawdads to fill our tub—SCOTTY!

Then, there was the time I had a big bottle of Sprite I had been saving in the refrigerator all day. I like it icy cold. It was one of those sixteen ounce bottles, with the long neck and the pretty green glass. You could turn them in at the store for a nickel a piece. I was really looking forward to drinking that soda. I was surprised; it was still there, right where I left it, hidden behind the jar of pickles. I didn’t notice that it didn’t make that tell-tale fizz, when I opened it. It was a hot day, and I was so thirsty. I put it to my lips, turning it up to take a long cold swig…and GAGGED. I spit it out all over the kitchen floor, counter and even managed somehow to hit the ceiling. When I finally unpuckered my lips, the lemon juice was still running down my chin. SCOTTY!
I’m much older now. I have a little Scotty of my own. He just turned eleven and you could say he lives up to his name sake. My Scotty doesn’t have an older sister to torture, but he is every bit as creative as his predecessor. I make it a point to send him as often as possible to visit his Uncle Scotty. We were there visiting just last weekend. My brother was grilling steaks. I was in the kitchen with his wife Jill, I was in charge of making my world famous macaroni salad. All of a sudden I heard the clatter of the barbeque pit hit the stone patio in the back yard. I looked out the window and was amazed to see, the scene being played out there. It looked like a clip from one of those slap stick comedy shows that you would see on television. The pit had indeed been tipped over. All I could see was my little brother Scotty, a grown man now, jumping around the back yard, slapping at himself with a big metal spatula and swinging his other hand wildly, while dozens of crickets jumped out of the pit in every direction. Just a few feet away, lay my little Scotty, laughing hysterically and rolling around in the grass. Then I heard that fateful call- SCOTTY!