Serving up Poetic Justice

This story begins in a convergence of back alleyways on a recent Friday evening in my hometown where a free concert, one of a summer series,  is about to begin. The band is a popular local group of sixty-something-year-old males who play country music and know exactly how to please their audience. The alleyway is crammed with people – young and old – and by the time the concert is underway, there is standing room only. Looking around, people north of fifty and those who are specially-abled are over-represented in this crowd.

My brother is one of those who are specially-abled. I have brought him to this concert because the band, TGR, is his hands-down favorite.  And although the direct care workers in his group home do their best to get him and his housemates to these concerts, occasionally circumstances arise that prevent them from doing so. I’m not taking any chances.    

It is a gorgeous night. The heat wave has broken, there’s a pleasant breeze and everyone seems happy and relaxed. It’s ‘bring your own chair’ so I set mine up next to T, who works in my brother’s home and who has, in fact, come with two of his housemates. There are other employees from other group homes – angels all – there with their excited charges and I am introduced to everyone.  

Promptly at 7 p.m.  the band members take their place on the stage and in a moment, the distinctive and familiar opening bars to Amarillo by Morning flow from the stage.  I love this song. I love TGR's rendition of it. I sink into musical bliss. I glance at my brother and wait for his metamorphosis. To watch him in this moment is to experience the true meaning of the 1970’s song, I’ve Got the Music in Me.  His facial expression grows intense. His feet start tapping. His arms begin moving.  He no longer appears to perceive anyone around him. It’s just him and the music. Within a few measures, every cell in his body is chair-dancing with a vengeance. Soon his chair can no longer contain him and, as if propelled, he springs suddenly to his feet.

He will dance every single dance tonight, with gusto, mostly by himself.  And he’s damned good.  His teachers include the best – Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Elvis Presley (those hips) – even Barbara and Bobby (and later Cissy) from The Lawrence Welk Show.  He's got all the moves. He’s light on his feet. He keeps the beat.  The words ‘debonair’ and ‘suave’ come to mind and stay there.  Oh, and a pinch of The Fonz coolness for good measure.   

A group of women enter the dance space and begin line dancing. My brother studies their moves, joins them on their periphery and tries to copy them. It is hard not to laugh and I admit I do but it is with glee. In his seriousness, he is just too funny. He is about ½ step behind because he’s following them.  They turn 180 degrees and he spins around, perplexed at what they did when his back was to them. They lift their leg, he does too. They clap, he claps. He scrambles out of their way when they suddenly switch direction and threaten to run him over.   And when they leave the floor, he is still practicing what they did.

A slow dance comes on and couples come out to two-step, fox-trot. My brother is still intent on his line dancing. I can tell by the look on his face that he is getting lost in his dance practice and soon he will be oblivious to everyone around him. On a crowded dance floor, this is not a good thing. I get up, I’m only a few steps away. I put my arms around his shoulders and say, “How about a dance with your old sister?” and I steer him in to a slow dance with me. His t-shirt is wet from his efforts. He stiffens at first – I’ve interrupted his escalation, but then he allows me to defuse his intensity.  I tell him I noticed how hard he was working to line dance with the women and what a great job he was doing. He looks at me so earnestly, and says, “I try.” Yes, my sweet bro, you try.

******

Not long before their break, the lead singer who I shall call BM (real initials, swear to God), waves a pile of 8-1/2 x 11 fliers and announces that it is their performance schedule for the near future. He sets them down on the stage. Three or four of the specially-abled attendees immediately take one and head back to where we are seated to present these to their staff chaperones. “Hey!” calls BM into the mic. “You guys can’t read!”

It takes a split second for this comment to register, to realize which “you guys” he is talking about. I look up at T, sitting next to me.  “That wasn’t very nice!” I exclaim. She agrees with me, as do others with us. BM begins to sing again. I am sitting, appalled and in stunned silence. Well, that’s not exactly true. I’m stunned, yes – but silent, no. I am fuming. How dare he make that stereotyped assumption and into a microphone no less! T is upset too because not only was BM insensitive – what he said was patently untrue.  You can be sure that if there is a piece of paper with this band’s name on it – TGR – all three of the guys traveling with us would be able to read it AND the dates AND the venues.

At intermission, I approach the stage. BM is fumbling with equipment. My brother and his friend, G, are close to the stage. I put my arm around both of them and look up. “Hi BM, my name is Jan and I’d like to introduce you to my brother, David, and our good friend, G.”  BM is eyeing me suspiciously, unsure of what to make of me. I continue, “These guys are two of your biggest fans…… they come to every concert you give that they can get to.”  BM is fidgeting  and looking like he wishes to evaporate. “And there’s something else you should know about them.” I pause for effect.  “They can READ.” BM looks everywhere except at me. I repeat myself, “They can READ.” BM starts to back away and mumbles, “I saw him singing.”  My brain explodes.  I lead my brother and G away – they do not know they’ve been dissed, and I can see that the big BM just does not get it. Back at my seat, the others let me know they watched BM’s reaction carefully and agree that the man is clueless (and classless, I might add).

*****

The next evening after dinner, I meet my friend Jim for ice cream.  Jim is a drummer and he knows this band – TGR  – well because he subs for their drummer on occasion. He tells me that he will, in fact, be working with them later this week.  I tell him about the events of the previous evening, hoping that he will “get” why this has upset me.  I can see in his expression that he does and I am relieved. He volunteers to say something to BM and I tell him, no, it’s ok – he doesn’t need to do that. But I am grateful for his willingness.

We are quiet for a moment. Then Jim chuckles and I look at him questioningly. “You know,” he says, conspiratorially. “None of these guys can read music.”  I wait for more, unsure why he is telling me this. “On a gig, when I pull out sheet music…. they can’t relate to that.”  He continues. “Maybe I’ll just hand BM a piece of music, then say, ‘Oh that’s right!  You can’t read this’ and pull it away.”  Jim is grinning at the thought.  I laugh with delight, inwardly marveling at the poetic justice of this plan.

What goes around doesn’t usually come around quite this quickly!

Don't Mess With Him - You'll Answer to Me

Forty-eight years ago on November 20, I woke up in the middle of the night to find my grandmother in my double bed next to me. “Your mother went to the hospital,” she reported, when I wondered what she was doing there. A few hours later, the phone rang, and my father announced, “You have a little brother.” My sister and I were ecstatic. A boy was unusual in my family so this would be a novel experience. I had little idea at the time how novel it was to be.

I was 9 years old and this was my first real experience with a baby. My brother was pudgy and cute and he didn’t cry very much. I learned to change and feed him and didn’t think anything about it when he didn’t crawl until he was over a year old, take a step until almost two, and wouldn’t eat table food until he was four.  When I was 12, a “friend” told me that another girl who was the “neighborhood nasty” had said that my family was trying to hide my brother because there was something wrong with him. She whispered the word, “mongoloid.”  I was crushed. Why would we try to hide such a cute little guy? In a rare expression of feeling, I went home crying and told my parents who reassured me that the “neighborhood nasty” was being true to her reputation and that they certainly were not trying to hide him.

I recovered but became super over-protective. More than once, seeing behavior that led me to believe another kid was enroute to taking advantage of him, I sped through the house, leaped out the door and screamed at those kids to stop whatever it was they were doing. And over the years, I perfected a glare that warned, “Don’t mess with him or you’ll answer to me.”  I still pull it out from time to time.  

My brother has provided my family and those who know him well with 48 years of adventure, laughs, and occasional high blood pressure. Although incapable of distinguishing between left and right, up and down, or over and under, especially in moments when I need him to follow directions because I have my thumb in a dike and can’t move, he can hook up a VCR/DVD player in no time flat. My mother once stared in disbelief at his handiwork when she realized that he had switched his broken VCR with her working VCR without her knowledge. He also is smart enough to have figured out that if he removes a certain piece from the top of the doors in his group home, the bells that signal someone’s arrival and/or exit will be deactivated. He also figured out how to de-alarm the fire system because it made too much noise and awakened him in the middle of the night for fire drills.

My brother can find nothing you want him to find, but he has perfected his disappearing act so nobody can find him! Trust me when I say he’s good at it. Even the bloodhounds would agree.  

    

My brother says the funniest things. Every time he walks through the front door of his group home, he calls out, “Oh honey, I’m home!” as if he were on the set of Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best. Although some things he says are clear, his speech is often difficult to understand. Since many words sound the same coming out of his mouth, it’s often a guessing game to figure out what he is saying. Sometimes he helps us by spelling (yes, you read that correctly). He tells me that somebody at his group home made him a strawberry lello cake for his birthday. A lello cake, I think, my mind quickly making associations. A yellow cake? No, he says, a LELLO cake, J-E-L-L-O. Ah, a strawberry jello cake.  He tells me about a DVD he wants, Wicka. Wicka, I think, drawing an absolute blank. Wicker? Wicked? I try a few variations and he’s only frustrated with my inability to get it. “F-L-I-C-K-A” he spells as if I am daft. Oh!  Flicka, I say, triumphantly. Yes, “Wicka” he repeats. Okay.

My brother has unbelievable rhythm and all the right moves which he has learned from movies and Sha Na Na.  He is also as light on his feet and as debonair as Fred Astaire. He plays no favorites on the dance floor and the girls all love him. The staff at ARC refers to his harem with a laugh. Look for the crowd on the dance floor- my brother will be in the middle of it. He dances every dance and will be the last one on the floor at the end of the night, bowing graciously to the band or the DJ in thanks before he makes his grand exit.

My brother is meticulous about some things – a slob about others. On the one hand, his ability to fold clothes rivals that of any GAP employee. He even folds his dirty laundry as if it were going straight to a drawer instead of the laundry bin. On the other hand, his room is littered with random papers, empty juice bottles, and lone unmatched socks. It drives me insane.  But as I stand in a grocery store pondering the store brand vs. a name brand, he is busy straightening up the cans or boxes on the shelves - perfectly.

My brother takes great photographs and he bowls a better game than I do almost every time.

My brother walks at least 3 steps behind no matter how slowly I go. “Can’t you walk a little faster, D,” I’ll sputter in exasperation when I’m in a hurry. “Come on feet, hurry up,” he’ll command, immediately changing my mood from frustrated to laughing.  

My brother has a memory like an elephant. He remembers that I had spinach pie at a restaurant a year before and has in mind to order the same thing when we go back. He remembers the one DVD or video that was on his Christmas list that you couldn’t find/buy. At the mention of a long-dead relative, he’ll tell you the year of his/her birth (even if it was in the 1890s), and what their phone number was when they were alive – even if they died 20 years ago. But he doesn’t always remember to comb his hair, change his socks, or put on a belt.

I picked my brother up on Saturday morning, November 20, from his group home in western New York to head back to NYC where we would celebrate Thanksgiving and his birthday. I went in his room to check on his packing. For seven days, he had neatly (think GAP) assembled 7 pair of underwear, 10 undershirts, 9 pair of socks, 12 pair of long pants, and 3 shirts. It was hard to not laugh. I edited the pants and increased the shirts and before long, we were on our way. As we pulled out of the driveway, he looked at me, grinned, and said, “Hit the road, Jack.”

Somewhere between Dansville and Corning, he peered out the windshield up at the clear blue sky, then settled back in his seat. “Well, mom,” he said. “My birthday is today. I am 48 years old.” A lump threatened my throat. I promised my mom moments before she drew her last breath that I would take care of him. I glanced over at my passenger. “I’m sure mom knows it’s your birthday today, honey,” I said. “And I’m sure she is happy because she knows we are on our way to New York City together.” He reached over and patted my shoulder reassuringly.  “I am happy too,” he said.