My brother thinks we should move to Thailand and open up a backpacking hostel.
I’m not so sure I’d be able to handle that much hippy.
Not that I wouldn’t be willing to give it a try. I’m sure the opportunity for adventure and writing material would be vast.
He’ll report back on the situation, I’m sure. He just left this morning, so I’m expecting an email within the next two weeks casually mentioning his intentions of marrying a local.
With Kid-Ginger, anything is possible.
Plus I recommended he read The Alchemist on the trip. What better advice to give a brother than-hit the road, don’t look back, and go make your own journey?
I can feel my father’s expression as he reads that last sentence. It’s bothered my parents for some time that I’ve been able to -ahem-casually suggest ideas for Kid-Ginger since he was quite small.
I can’t count the amount of times my mother has stared at him, exasperated, and muttered:
“Why, why on Earth do you keep listening to your sister? Stop it. Just stop listening to what she tells you to do-honestly.”
She may have been on to something the day I blindfolded him and fed him anchovy paste. But I don’t think he really understood until nearly ten years later, when I decided to give him a ‘cool’ haircut.
I’ve somehow managed to convince three people in my life that I am capable of cutting hair.
He was my first victim.
Things were going well when I shaved off the sides of his head, and let longer red locks fall over the buzz underneath. This was the nineties and we were in Seattle, so the grungy, mohawk potential was cool at the time.
For the record, he enjoyed the modern art on his scalp for the first week. Like a little bad-ass, he ran across the soccer field, scoring goals while donning a look my father would later refer to as ‘white-trash chic’.
bad.ass.
If my mother hated the artwork on his head at that point, she despised it a week later when I again came at him with scissors. We were eating sandwiches on the porch, when I glanced at my 11 year old sibling and said:
“You know kiddo, I’m pretty sure it’s uneven. I just need to fix it-a little, won’t take long, I promise.”
The problem with making hair even when you have no idea what you’re doing-is that somehow you convince yourself to just keep going shorter, and shorter….
and shorter….
Suddenly I realized I had turned my brother into a turnip.
uhhhh..whoops?
When my mom came home from work that afternoon, she found me outside the bathroom door, trying to console her only son on what would go down in history as Kid-Ginger’s worst haircut.
When he finally opened the door and she saw what I had done to his head, I knew I was grounded.
Hours later, after he had returned from the proper hairdressers and finally stopped glaring at me, I convinced him that it was just a misunderstanding.
By bedtime, we were friends again.
Here’s hoping he comes home from Thailand.
Wandering Menace 