Mac Attack

My brother was always way too nice to me. He's six years older, and could have been mean or at least distant, but Mac was the kind of brother who, at 13, spent his entire $5 at the Greek festival on a heart shaped box filled with potpourri for me. I was the kind of sister who kicked him in the face and made his nose bleed. And I was only two when I did it.

Now Mac is 32 and lives in New Orleans with his wife and their 4-year-old daughter, Marley, and 4-month-old son, Jack. He's fluent, and I mean fluent, in Spanish and is getting his doctorate in Spanish Literature at Tulane. Mac is consistent. He's impeccably moral. He alternates between periods of extreme sloth and activity. He'll watch 4 hours of Family Guy and then write on his dissertation all night. He'll play a game on a Sears website to take care of a virtual tree for an hour just to get a coupon. He's proud he can sing like the guy from Hootie and the Blowfish. He's an entrepreneur and actually has a savings account. He has beautiful light blue eyes with thick black lashes and a thick head of black, curly hair. I adore him.

Here's a photo of us posing like our ancestors in the hallway of my grandpa's assisted living facility:



Mac, the only brother, the best brother:

3 years old: He's babysitting me. We carpet the living room floor with newspaper and dried black eyed peas. He turns on the Oliver North Hearings and we simualate fart-powered aeronautics in my cabbage patch kids.

16 years old: He comes home from his job at an Internet gaming cafe at 2 in the morning and wakes me up. We go to Country Cupboard (an old gas station) and buy lemon-lime powerade and Reese's peanut butter cups. He drives me around Canton listening to 311 and Sublim with the windows down. It is a school night.

25 years old: New Orleans, his wife is in Utah and he's sad. After seeing Godzilla, we drive under a bridge singing, yes, Oasis, at the top of our lungs in his car named Bob Marley. At home we stay up all night listening to music from when we were in high school. Around 5, we decide to go to Cafe Du Monde and get coffee/hot chocolate and beignets. The sun comes up while we're sitting there. Then we go yardsale-ing.

But really, the best story happened before I was born, relayed to me by my mother tonight on the phone:

Mama (who deserves her own blog post, as well as my Dad) told me she was offended by how open Mac is on his blog.

"He talks about his sex life. He even emailed me some pictures of Jack's [his 4 month old son] first poop. He's always been obsessed with poop. I remember when we were at the Dillard House and he was five or six. We were all sitting at a family table and we could hear Mac in the bathroom. He yelled out 'Fire One!' and then flushed and then, 'Fire Two!' and then he flushed again. He was pooping in there! We could hear him perfectly. We were laughing so hard we were crying. Kermit Keezer had big tears just comin out of his eyes. He kept going 'Fire three! Fire four!' just going and going."