I was at the sea for new year's eve with my oldest brother brother + wife and kids. I had been horsing around with my two nephews on the beach, well let me rephrase that, I was checking out what we thought was a bomb that had washed on to the shore. We had seen some firetrucks and police pulling up on the beach from our apartment and of course, this had to be checked out. It made me question the parenting skills of my brother:
- Hey I think they found a world war II bomb on the beach, and the police looks totally clueless how to handle this deadly explosive, I'll go take a look with the kids ok?
- (from behind newspaper) don't forget to put on their jackets
It turned out it was a container filled with fosfor, my dad told me later (he had seen it on the news), though my youngest nephew's theory was that it was a can of catfood. "Que?"
After we got chased away by a police official with more common sense than me or my brother, my nephews emotionally blackmailed me into renting them a bike to ride aound on the promenade for 30 mins. When we returned the bikes after about 17.5 minutes the bike guy told me "thank you and good bye sir." As we walked away to go drink a milk shake (the reason the bike ride was cut short 12 mins) Stan asked me why this guy called me "sir." I was going to say, "well Stan, the guy probably does not know I have a PhD so I can forgive him for not addressing me with the more appropriate title of Dr." but somehow I did not think this was what he meant. And it wasn't. "You are not a sir because you aren't married!"
-So what about your dad?
- well he is married, so he is a sir.
- what about Bram
- he is he is married too, so he is a sir
WRONG, my other brother is not married, even though he has two kids. I had a similar discussion with Stan last time he was here and he was busting my balls about marriage, and then I had told him "and by the way, for your information, Bram is NOT married." That got me in some trouble back then as it had confused Stan and my mom had to do some damage control, but hey, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. But I held my tongue this time, and let my brother get away with his undeserved sirhood.
So sure enough, Stan would not drop the wedding issue, despîte my obvious non-verbal and verbal cues that I'd rather switch topics ("so what about them Teletubbies?"). "Why aren't you married? when will you marry? What does Heather say".... and then, the question that explained his Gestapo approach to the wedding issue "well, if you get married, I am going to come to america." I told him to finish his milk shake.