My Brother

Heh. Just kidding, I don't have a brother.

But apparently there's one person in this world that didn't know that. I have a feeling he must of been a shut in playing with sock puppets in ways I'd just rather not even think about.

"Hello Mr. Sock. How are you?"

"Oh my! What is that you have for me?" comes back the answer in a falsetto voice.

I told you I'd rather not think about it, because everything degenerates downhill after that dialog and I want to sleep tonight without dreaming about talking, spitting, dick sock puppets. That's just wrong on so many levels.

In my hometown I was pretty well known. My picture was in the paper pretty often because of my involvement in sports and my grandfather was the minister of one of the few churches in town and I was forced to take an active part in church activities. On top of all that I'm 6'7" and I don't blend into a crowd very easily.

So one day, I went into a grocery store and bought a 18 pack of rot gut beer. Mr. Sock Puppet sells it to me even though I thought everyone in town knew I was underage. I'm ecstatic and go bumbling out of the store with my booty.

My buddies and I retreated to....oh hell, nowhere. We were proud and drank our beer in front of everyone.

But all good things must come to an end and since the last ruse went so well, we ("We" meaning my friends. I don't remember agreeing to any of this)decided it was a good idea to head back to the same store and send my dumb ass back in. I was half lit, so when presented to me as "That's the only way we're getting more beer" it even sounded like a good idea to me. I was highly gullible and stupid at 17. I grab another 18 pack and walked a little less surely up to Mr. Sock Guy's check stand. And by "A little less surely", I mean to say I wasn't walking so good. Unless you consider a healthy young man using the aisles and the opposite 50lb bag displays of dog food as pin ball bumpers as walking normally. If you do, I was golden.

Sadly, most people frown on that kind of walking unless you have some sort of disease, which unfortunately I didn't. I was listing hard to the starboard side due to the heavy burden in my right hand and that caused me to flail and use the vegetables and whatever else was handy to steady myself.

He rang me up and then asked suspiciously "Didn't you just buy a bunch of beer?"

I looked at him, the picture of underage teenage drunken innocence, and said "Nah, that must of been my brother. That dude's an alcoholic. I get this all the time."

Then he took my money and I stumbled out the door.

For a dumb assed kid I had a pretty smooth mouth on me.

And I presume that when his shift was over, he went and put socks with drawn faces on all his extremities and had a puppet show. I really don't care to hazard a guess on that last part.