This story originally appeared in the July 1 issue of The Trussville Tribune…
My little brother has always been such a brat. When we were growing up, Michael meddled around in my room, pestered my friends and me to distraction, listened in on my phone calls, hogged the one color TV in the house after school (I liked watching Gomer Pyle; his favorite was Gilligan’s Island), and gobbled up the best snacks in the house before anybody else could get any.
Our older brother Darrell and I had no doubt The Brat was Mama and Daddy’s favorite. They frequently made us let the baby have his way, and we regularly accused them of letting him get away with murder. If we went somewhere, he wanted to go, too. If we did something, he wanted to do it, too. And we were often overruled when we tried to keep him away.
“He just wants some attention,” Mama would say. “Be nice.”
That’s easier said than done when you’re 16 years old, desperately trying to cultivate a “cool girl” image, and you’ve got a pesky 11-year-old brother hanging around. Giving him a little attention by whacking him over the head with a stick and locking him in a closet crossed my mind on more than one occasion.
Even as we’ve grown older, Michael has continued to be a pest. He’s always got something say about how he got all the looks in the family (I beg to differ), and for some reason, he claims to be smarter than I am. But if he’s so smart, how come his latest bid for attention was a round of open heart surgery? I mean, gee whiz, couldn’t he think of something that would cause him less pain and trouble than that?
It all started a couple of weeks ago when Michael saw a cardiologist for testing after experiencing intermittent chest pains for several days. He ultimately wound up in the ER hooked up to all manner of apparatus and giving umpteen histories to various medical personnel. The doctor’s level of concern was high enough for an arteriogram to take place the next day – a Saturday – and the results showed the need for some bypasses. Surgery was scheduled for the following Tuesday.
When Michael’s – and thus, our family’s – ordeal began, each of us quickly came to the startling realization that at 48, he’s the same age Daddy was when he died of a heart attack in 1977. While that had us all a bit freaked, we realized that medical science has made many, many advances with regard to heart disease in the past 33 years and that bypass surgery has become relatively routine – which sounds great when it’s somebody else’s brother you’re talking about.
But the one thing that just about did me in was Michael’s vivid description of the procedure the day before surgery. I won’t go into detail here, but suffice it to say, for all the times I’ve considered doing him physical harm myself, the prospect of someone else cracking open his breastbone and playing around with some of his vital organs nearly made me ill.
Fortunately, though, the surgery went well, and five bypasses later, Michael is as good as new. Well, maybe not as good as new just yet. He’s still on the road to complete recovery. But he’s a whole lot better than he was a couple of weeks ago – and a whole lot more of a brat. With everyone (including yours truly) fluttering around, making every effort to cater to his every whim, he’s getting the idea that he’s somebody important.
But I’ve got news for him. As soon as this whole thing is over, he’s going to get a piece of my mind for going to such lengths for the sake of a little attention, and I’m thinking I just might threaten him with a big stick to drive the point home.
For now, though, I’m reveling in the relief of a crisis passed and hoping it will be a long, long time before we ever have to deal with another situation like that again. But in the meantime, I’m reserving my rights as a big sister: If anybody or anything is going to hurt my little brother again, it really should be me.
A big shout out and many thanks to Dr. Jason Thompson, Dr. Stanley Lochridge, and the nurses at St. Vincent’s East for the excellent care recently rendered to Michael Harper.
Somewhere in the Middle 