Jordie Karlinski
WRTG 3020
Draft 1
My Older Not So Manly Brother
I don’t have a mean family, we are actually all very nice. We are best friends. We care for each other, we love each other, and we are always there for each other. I am the youngest of three children. While my sister is five years older than I, my brother is only sixteen months. Naturally, we were closer than ever growing up. Whatever he tried, I wanted to try too. Whatever sport he played, I wanted to play too. It is no wonder why today I am a sport-loving, competitive person.
As a family we took trips. We took trips as close as Yellowstone National Park or as far away as New Zealand. Now don’t get the idea that we were the Griswold’s going on vacation to Las Vegas because we far from them. My parent’s knew what they were doing when they planned our trips. Although we weren’t perfect, we did have a good system where we could make it to the end without wanting to kill each other, which in my opinion is a successful family trip. This doesn’t apply for trips today though…that’s another story.
On a trip to Lake Powell we had rented a houseboat with my grandparents, uncle and aunt, and cousins. I love everything Lake Powell has to offer including the swimming, wakeboarding, fishing, hiking, and the cliff jumping of course. Since I was not the stereotypical seven-year-old girl I was constantly jumping off those cliffs no matter how high. Well, not fifty feet, but you get the point. Sadly, my brother was not the stereotypical nine-year-old boy. No matter how high the “cliff” was he was not jumping. That dark, mysterious Lake Powell water got to him. He couldn’t see past it to get the addicting adrenaline rush from cliff jumping.
Like most American families we made a trip to good old Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It wouldn’t have been a real family trip without misshapes. Of course this misshape had to have happened to my brother. Poor little Teddy, the twig figure he was, got lost at Disney World. I’m sure my sister and I were fine with him being lost, but since Disney World is Disney World, and children get lost all the time…Teddy was found. I think this began his constant clinging to my mom Suzy, scared out of his mind and never wanting to leave her side. Teddy did not like big places with a lot of people, especially because we grew up in Aspen where the population of 6000 could fit in a corner of Disney World.
My lovely parents decided to take us to Europe for a few weeks, traveling from country to country, enjoying everything Europe has to offer. I was ten so that made Teddy twelve. This is where I began to fall in love with Europe. Just how every movie depicts it, the cobble-stone streets, the alleyways with clothes hanging from side to side, the older men and women smoking cigarettes outside old cafés (this part I never loved), the au naturel food stricken with love and not pesky pesticides, and of course the old cathedrals and buildings.
We arrived at Lucerne, Switzerland. A town picture perfect nudged up on a beautiful lake and a panorama of mountains surrounding the area. This was my type of place. We stayed at an old Châteauxright on the water where if we dared, go swimming in the ice cold water. But we never did, especially with having a brother like Teddy and his Lake Powell experience, and me just simply not wanting to freeze my ass off.
We did what most tourists do when they go to a foreign country, we walked around…and walked, and walked, and walked. Touring with my parents was a sport. You had to be in good shape to keep up with my dad. He would not stop if you had to tie your shoe or use the restroom. He was on his ownagenda. This probably explains why even today I have to run to keep up with him, especially in airports. Back to the story, one afternoon we are all “touring” around Lucerne, enjoying the beautiful town with the closed off pedestrian streets. Open air cafés and restaurants, souvenir shops filled with Swiss chocolates, knives, flags, and sweaters lining the old roads. Like I mentioned early, my family really isn’t mean. But to my surprise, my parents decided to play an evil trick on Teddy. Everyone knew that he didn’t like being around too many foreign people without his family. So, my parents proceeded to push my sister and I and themselves around a corner while Teddy fell behind looking at all the neat things hanging from stores. Sure enough as soon as Teddy realized he had “lost” us, his eyes grew giant, his face grew long and he started panicking. Really panicking. He dashes from side to side, pushing past people trying to find us. We are not in sight.
Poor Teddy starts yelling “Soooooooozy”, “Soooooooozy”. You can hear the panic in his voice, trying to get my moms name out. Trembling. Once my parents and my sister and I had enough of a laugh, we popped out from around the corner. Teddy’s eyes were glistening from being on the verge of crying. We couldn’t stop laughing but I know for one thing, Teddy did not find it funny. For the rest of the trip he made sure not to have any one of us out of his sight. What made for a terrible three minutes for Teddy made for an exciting and memorable story my family can still look back on today.