FORTUNES OF FAMILY

Roland Mann

Momma used to always make me eat all my vegetables because she’d say that there are starving kids all over the world and I didn’t need to waste them because those starving kids didn’t have it to waste and therefore I ought to be glad that I was fortunate to live in the United States and get all the food I got. So, clean up my plate.

What I know now is that it really wouldn’t have mattered if there were starving kids or not, she just wanted me to eat all my vegetables.

Course, when I got older, the starving kids line didn’t work. But, being a momma, she knew what else she could use. I’d have to eat all of my vegetables before I could get any ice cream or other such desert. I had to eat "good" before I could eat "bad." Made sense to me then...but not one lick of sense does it make now.

Course, when I got older still, she knew that I could just sneak into the kitchen when she wasn’t around and get what I wanted out of the ‘fridge or cabinets. Not only that, but I’d started working part-time and had some of my own money. It was no big deal to hop on my bike with the banana seat and ride up to the 7-11 and buy a candy bar. I always bought 3 Muskateers.

She tried for a while to threaten me with stuff like no tv or no this or no that. But I guess it got old after a while and she just gave up. Either that, or I’d gotten to be a teenager who ate all the time anyway and she had a bunch of other worries about me and my kid brother rather than if we ate all our spinach or not.

Actually, I don’t really ever remember having spinach. Popeye did, and I loved Popeye. But even watching him still didn’t make me want to eat spinach. Sure, I wanted the adrenalin/muscle surge he got, but I wasn’t willing to eat spinach to get it. And now that I think about it, I still don’t eat spinach. Popeye still does. And my own kid ain’t asked to eat a lot of spinach either, even though she’s seen Popeye eat it. I still wouldn’t mind the adrenalin/muscle surge, though.

I was never really big, even though I tried to be. See, I ate and ate and ate and I never really gained anything. I lifted weights and worked out, too. But I guess my attention span was just too low and I’d be thinking of something else while I was lifting instead of thinking about muscles and breathing in and out when I’m supposed to and all that. Can’t get bigger muscles if your mind is thinking about something else.

I used to think about rocket ships alot. Like a lot of boys growing up then, I wanted to be an astronaut and go to Mars. There’d already been a man on the moon. Everybody in the family always says that my great-grandmother never believed that there was a man on the moon. She said the government was playing tricks on us trying to scare us what with the Russians and all. Said they were just trying to figure out a way to get more money out of us.

My great-grandmother was a diehard Democrat. It didn’t matter who was running to her, she’d vote Democrat. Her own son could have been running on the Republican ticket and she’d have still voted against him. Course, being a Democrat goes way back in our family. We were all good Confederates in the War of Northern Aggression. Well, all but one, but we ain’t allowed to mention his name. And then when we lost the war, those who were only soft Democrats became hard Democrats and it was the thing to do to hate Republicans. Grandpa always said if they’d quit calling it "the party of Lincoln," they might be luckier in getting more Southern votes.

Course, I don’t really know the difference between a hard and soft Democrat, but I’d guess it don’t matter any more. Some time a while back, the Democrats and the Republicans sorta changed roles. I don’t know why or when, but when I heard my Grandpa talking about the party, I was thinking he was talking about the Republican party when he was really talking about the Democrats. Didn’t sound like Democrats to me, but I wasn’t gonna argue.

I used to argue all the time with my kid brother, though. We argued about everything. Nothing was immune to a free for all when the two of us would get at it. We used to have these Star Trek dolls--course, it ain’t cool to call them dolls no more, they are "action figures" --but dolls is what they really were. We’d go out in this big ditch on the other side of our property, which was one of the biggest pastures I’d ever seen. At the time, it was all the known universe to me--except for outer space, but I already talked about that.

So we’d take the whole crew of the Enterprise out and set them up in the ditch and have some big war with the Klingons. I’d always make my brother be the Star Trek guys, and I’d kick his butt with just two Klingons. He’d always run to momma crying, and then I’d have to pick up all the dolls.

We played like that for lots of years, and when I graduated high school and got my own apartment, he’d come stay with me. We still played together a lot, mostly computer games and such. But one time when he was staying with me, I let him go across the street to a party. I never saw him again alive.

When my kid was born about a year and a half later, I named her after my brother. Yeah, I had to make his name work for female, but anything is possible these days. Just ad an "ina" or "ette" on the back of a man’s name and suddenly it works for a woman. She’s not old enough to know that’s she’s named after her uncle, but I’ll definitely tell her once she is old enough to understand.

‘Course, I’m still busy trying to feed her grandma her peas.

end.