Every family has a few legendary stories that never lose their appeal not matter how many times you tell them.

For mine, one of those is the tale of my younger brother putting his head through the basement wall.  It happened right here during a game of pickle with our other brother when we were all quite young:

The ping pong table wasn’t there at the time.  On the far end we had stacked up a few camping air mattresses to allow for sliding into the base without rug burn, except all that did was provide a near friction-free, headfirst trip through drywall as Pat dove to avoid a tag.  I wish we had a picture of the result.  Pat’s head perfectly split the studs, leaving drywall dust in his hair as the only real damage.

He stood up and looked blankly at me and Ben, appearing calm and okay until we asked the natural question: “Didn’t that hurt?”  Then, with the realization visibly spreading through his body, his brain registered that perhaps that wasn’t such a pleasant experience, and he started to cry.  Not wanting to get in trouble for either injury or property destruction, Ben and I went into damage control mode, doing everything we could to get Pat to stop.

Thus was born, “Baby drink coffee, coffee drink baby,” a completely ridiculous phrase that we repeated over and over, as fast as we could, as Pat shifted from tears to uncontrollable laughter.  There is no good explanation for why this worked, but even if I got hit with the Men In Black mind eraser, that memory would somehow still endure.

While we’re on the topic of basement damage, there are some other epic tales from down there.  That window in the first picture is a recent addition.  There used to be a roughly two foot by one foot window at the top, which we broke at least three times by playing baseball games with the batter hitting balls in that direction.  We eventually got smart enough to use foam balls:

Of course, that didn’t stop us from continuing to do some damage.  It’s possible I may have followed through a bit too high a couple of times and left my mark on the ceiling:

In high school, a couple of my friends were wrestling just below that mark and ended up accidentally running into the wall, leaving a butt-sized hole.  To their credit, the pusher showed up the next day with a square of drywall and a toolbox and patched that sucker up:

Lions are versatile creatures.  They can hunt, star in Disney films and serve as Hollywood studio mascots.

They can also obscure obscure hockey stick holes in the wall:

That, by the way, is the exact moment that roller hockey got banned in the basement.  In retrospect we probably got lucky that was the worst thing we did.

On the other side of the basement, where the ping pong table was located for most of my life, is a whole whose origins I don’t quite know, but I suspect were somehow the result of a paddle hit:

What I like most about this one is the mystery involved.  Not the way it was created, but rather what is down inside the wall there.

I can’t say for sure how many, but I absolutely know there are several ping pong balls that got pushed through the hole over the years.  That’s probably a better end for cracked ones than the more fun game of smashing them as hard as possible at a sibling.  I hope someone keeps the collection if and when they open up that wall.

(P.S. If you want to know more about the artwork on the walls, it’s all explained here.)

Last night, the fabric of our very society shredded, bringing everything we have come to know to a screeching halt.

And by that I mean Facebook and Instagram were down for about an hour.  That hour also happened to be one during which much of the East Coast was asleep.

How did we cope with such a thing?  Well we still had Twitter, and for the first time in forever, I had MySpace.

Much like when I logged into AIM last year, this experience was a tremendous walk down memory lane.  My profile picture?  This beauty, from a foot scanner machine at the shoe store where I worked back in the 2005-07 MySpace glory days:

I knew the site underwent all kinds of changes, including new ownership, but I wasn’t sure what to expect.  For example, the profile picture is there, as is my “Top 8,” but gone are any posts made to what I’ll call my wall because I don’t remember the term here and so too are any messages sent between me and my friends.

Oh and the MySpace blog section is no more.  Good thing I moved mine over here many years ago.

With the posts gone, there was really only one thing to do: pick up where I left off.

I looked through the list of my 65 “connections” and was amazed at some of the profile pictures.  Some of you looked very different in 2006.  I also for the life of me can’t remember the last name of one girl I knew in college.  Overall, my best guess is that I’ve had contact with 42 of them in the past year or so, which actually seems pretty good to me.

OH.  I just remembered that girl’s name.  I’m crushing this MySpace thing.

When I poked around some more I discovered one very scandalous fact related to my family. 

For those who don’t know, I have three siblings — an older and younger brother and a twin sister (which is not the scandal).  The first three real people in my Top 8: younger bro, older bro, sister.

First of my sister’s Top 8: husband, older bro, me, younger bro.

Older bro has no Top 8.

Younger bro?  He has only six people in his Top 8.  The last two are me and our older brother.  Our sister is NOT ON THE LIST.

Christmas is going to be so awkward next year.

There may be no place on this Earth where I am more popular than the Hair Cuttery three miles from my house in Virginia.

This morning I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for the place to open, and the woman who cuts my hair most often spotted me and waved as she exited her car to walk inside.  By contrast, when I’m walking down the sidewalk toward work, I can easily blow past one of my coworkers and not even realize it (sorry y’all).

Once inside, I’m usually greeted with smiles and kind words from whomever is working — a combination of “honey,” “sweetie” and “you haven’t been to see us in a while.”

It’s important to note I’ve been to multiple locations over the years, and while there were some nice people say in Jacksonville, none of those other experiences has come close to this one.

I think it helps that I’m there first thing in the morning when there’s rarely anyone else, plus having spent many years in customer service I tend to have good connections with others in those kinds of positions.

Of course I’ll never be more popular than with my longest tenured hair cutter.  That would be my mom.

At some point during my early-ish elementary school days we got a set of clippers at home, which made perfect sense with four kids around whose hair had the audacity to never stop growing.  Mostly this was an amazing development, leaving us only to ask (usually after building a coalition) and mom would soldier through giving us all a trim.

But there was one time where everything didn’t go as smoothly as intended.  I was in the fourth grade rocking something like a #4 on the sides and back of my head and a #7 on the top.

The responsibility of the first kid in line was to spread out a shower curtain on the floor, plop a chair on top, and open up the case containing the cutting supplies.  Then we sat down, put in our order and let the magic happen.

Somehow during all of this my mom and I got distracted, and by the time the clippers hit my head it was too late to catch our mistake.  Neither one of us put on the #7 guard, meaning my hair was instead being given a nice, close #0.  There’s no going back at that point.  She had to shave my entire head basically down to nothing, leaving only a tiny bit of fuzz.

In high school, this probably would have been a big deal.  But as a fourth grader it took about seven seconds at school for people to ask what happened and then forget.

We were left with an important new step in the hair cutting process — putting the first guard on myself each time — as well as a memory both my barber and I still laugh about today.

Which person have you spent the most time with during your lifetime?

It may have been my idle brain talking, but I started thinking about that question the other day on the Metro and really wish I could definitively know the answer.

In the same way I can check my bank account balance from my smartphone, I want an app that gives a live total, perhaps with a simple leaderboard.  There could be fun icons that show who is rising or falling the fastest, or others like who holds the record for seeing me the most days in a row.

Defining “spending time” as being at least in the same room, it seems like the top contenders would have to be members of my immediate family.  After all, I spent my entire childhood under the same roof as all of them, and with six people there, that often meant being in the same room as someone.

For everyone, your mom gets a 9-month head start, but in my case that advantage is nullified by the fact that I have a twin sister.  You might think my sister got a further boost by being in school with me, but we actually spent almost no time in the same classes.

This post needed a family pic, and this is probably my favorite

As far as my brothers go, my older brother was around me for nearly three years before the younger one showed up.  However, the younger one got two of those years back when the older one went to college.  If I had to honestly guess, I would say given the amount of time we spent playing video games together, at baseball games and playing whatever sport we made up in the back yard, I would have to assume my younger brother is the winner.

Of course we’ll never know…unless someone has been watching this whole time.  If that’s the case, please email me.

The most entertaining thing kids can do is take a piece of information and give it a slight twist through a combination of imagination or not quiiiiite understanding distinctions.

I spent last weekend at my brother’s house, which meant lots of quality time with my niece and nephew.  They both just had birthdays, so I got now 3-year-old Mady a spider monkey stuffed animal from the National Zoo.  She started referring to it as “Spider Man Monkey” which clearly I could not endorse more:

No word yet if it has any super powers.

One night after her bedtime story I tried to get her to make the McKayla Maroney “not impressed” face.  You know, this one:

When I pulled out my phone to take a picture, she insisted I make a “Mady video” so she could see herself.  So obviously that happened:

In the end, I think we did okay, especially with the second picture:

Just so you don’t think he was neglected, here’s my equally funny nephew Colbert chillin in a tot-sized chair:

Part of the weekend included doing some work to get their house ready to sell.  The snake population in their backyard did not appreciate me revamping the brush/tree stump portion of the yard:

Fortunately, we were able to talk things out and nobody had to resort to biting.

She has no idea why, but my niece has been taught the phrase “moshi moshi man.”

In case that means nothing to you, let me take you back to a little show called “Full House.”

There’s an episode in season 4 in which DJ begs her dad to get her own phone line in the room she shares with Stephanie.  Danny makes her promise to be responsible, and is outraged when an astronomical bill arrives.  DJ swears she didn’t make any of the many calls to Tokyo.  She is right.  It’s baby sister Michelle.

Near or at the end of the episode (this is totally by memory since I can’t find a clip online anywhere) we see Michelle dialing Tokyo, and when someone picks up she says, “Moshi moshi man!”

Fast forward to now, and we have my brother teaching Madelyn this:

I can only hope this is the first of many Michelle catchphrases that enter her vocabulary.

While I was down there, we finally welcomed my new nephew Colbert (Collin Robert), a week after he was due.  My brother’s dog probably won’t like how loud his house will be soon, but at least so far Madelyn seems to like her baby brother:

Thus ends a children-heavy post.  Back to the normal ridiculousness next time.