And the Award for Most Hilarious Brother Goes too.....

     The other night my brother and I were reflecting on some fond memories, memories too good not to share....      
     What a glorious 16 years his life has been in the Olson home.  Let me tell you.  First, a little bit about him.  He's a really smart and creativeand sensitive, but he'd rather you think of him as a tough guy.  Which, I guess is true to some extent.  Try punching him in the stomach. Guaranteed your hand will break. No joke. But, I like to think of him more as a sour patch kind of kid.  First he's sour, than he's sweet.

Here's the young chap in his usual place in front of  his trusty computer!

        Sure he's a rough and tough kind of guy, always looking for a wrestling partner.  I think he secretly thinks he's The Rock.  Poor kid. I mean, yeah, he's a beast when it comes to physical fitness, but when he was ten he knew every word to every single Avril Lavigne song out there.  To this day one of his favorite 80's hits is Tom's Diner.  And he loved the movie Julia and Julia. Truly.  Yes, he's got the abs of a champion, but he's also got the heart....and the tearducts.............and the stomach:

And yet, somehow, he's still got abs of steel....lucky....

       Michael is.....a goof and a spaz, and is full of energy.  All we need to do is move his bed outside and he would literally live outside 24/7.  He's quite the athlete.  You bet your life! If only he could channel all that energy for good......instead of for sprinting across the house to where ever I'm sitting every time he has gas....  ohhhh....you think I'm kidding....I only wish I was.

       

       He can be pretty clever though.  Every once and a while he'll say something that is just hilarious. One time we were walking outside and it was snowing.  I was singing some silly Hannah Montana song, (hey! we were kids!), "If we were a movie, you'd be the right guy...." and Michael turns to me and starts singing, "If this were a movie, this would be fake snow!"  Gold.  This kid is good.
     

        
         Once When Michael was about four years old, and I was around eight, we were playing outside in the backyard.  Michael had to go the bathroom so he ran to the back door.  Our backdoor was hard to open though, because it kind of stuck, so you had to know the trick to twisting the handle just right.  Needless to say, Michael couldn't get in so he yelled at me to come open it for him.  Not wanting to walk the exhausting fifteen steps from the swingset to the door I yelled, "Why don't you just go outside! You're a boy!" The next thing I know, Michael, following the advice of his big sister, is squatting on the concrete driveway, taking a poo. Nice Mike. Nice.  Yeah, that's always  a nice thing to bring up..."Remember that time you pooped on the driveway???"   We're a real mature family.
                                                        
         The kid is priceless.  What almost-seventeen-year-old still plays with Yu-gi-oh cards??? Oh, oh, I know...Michael does! The other night, I kid you not, he was up till 2 in the morning playing Yu-Gi-Oh with his friend over Skype, of all things.....I swear...if I have to hear "I summon my dark mythical creature of blue-eyed- magical nonsense power" or whatever again, I will bust a cap.  (Michael always teases me when I use that phrase because I used to think it meant "get so angry that I bust a blood vessel", where cap is short for capillary....anywho...he laughed really hard when I told him that.)

       On occasion, he can be really cute. It's always my favorite to see him baking or folding laundry, because he always does it with such precision and care.  I made brownies with him once.  When it was time to smooth out the batter after we had poured it into the pan, in all seriousness he told me that he discovered a trick to distributing the mix evenly in a pan.  He picked up the pan and started shaking it vigorously from side to side.  It was the second cutest thing I've ever seen him do.  The first was this:

        My niece fell and scraped her elbow and my sister snapped this gem of a photo. Too cute. So, I guess this blog post turned out to be more of an ode to my little brother than anything.  He's silly, and rude, and annoying at times most of the times, but....he has his moments.

 I guess he's a keeper.