JLooney.com

Speaking of darker sides, let me share with you the tale of how I am kinda responsible for my brother getting divorced. Now before you get all bent and horrified at what a terrible person I am, understand that he’s better for it. He’s currently married to a wonderful gal that we all love dearly, and his first wife was a tremendous pain in the ass, and pretty kooky even by our messed up standards. I’ll change names and stuff to protect the guilty, but other than that, this tale is absolutely true.

So my brother Moron (not his real name) gets married to this girl named Sybil (not her real name either, and of course, no correlation between her and the literary figure with split personality disorder is intended or implied). Now to be honest, none of us really gave her much of a chance from the start, and so in that respect, I feel a little bad, but not too much. After they get married, they move into this apartment not too far from Old Midvale. It’s one of those two-story apartment buildings with a single row of 4 apartments on the top floor and 4 apartments on the bottom row. They lived on the top floor in the apartment on the far east end. The location of their apartment will be important in a minute. Sybil was terrified of living in that neighborhood from the get-go, and made no small amount of protest about it, but it was what they could afford while Moron was working and paying the bills while she went to school to be a hairdresser or some shit.

One day my sister (Moron’s twin) calls me up and asks if we want to go do something with her and her husband (who we like) later that night. Megan and I had no plans, so we decided we were down for whatever. Well, when the two of them show up to pick us up, we decide that trip to Wendover is a pretty fine agenda for a Friday night. Off we go, headed west on the 201 at 10pm on a Friday. We decided that we should stop and get some beverages for the ride, so we pulled off the freeway in West Point or Tooele. While we’re at the Top Stop, we decide it’ll take too long to get to Wendover and we’re already bored. But what to do on a Friday night like this?

I don’t recollect who brought it up, but I remember that me and Vince (that’s his real name – I couldn’t think of anything clever and I don’t think he cares) were all over it. We decide we need to stop and get some materials first, so we pull into Albertson’s and buy a broom, a roll of duct tape and 25’ of nylon cord.

“Why these particular items?” You may ask. Well, we had a very clear plan, and these items were critical to it being executed perfectly.

When we arrived at Moron’s apartment at around 11:00pm, I went up the half-flight of stairs to his front door and quickly ran a strip of duct tape along the edge of the only front-facing window in their apartment, effectively sealing it shut so they couldn’t open it from the inside. I then took about 3 feet of the nylon cord and tied one end around their doorknob and the other I cinched tightly to the stair rail right in front of their door which would keep them from opening it at all since it opened by swinging inward. While I was getting this handled, Vince broke the broom handle off and jammed it into the sliding glass door at the back of the house – the only other exit – which prevented them from opening that door. Within 30 seconds they were helplessly sealed inside their apartment and there was nothing they could do about it.

But they didn’t know they were sealed inside their apartment, and we weren’t patient enough to wait around for morning time, so as soon as I saw Vince come back around from behind the house, I pounded on their front door like I was trying to get inside to escape a zombie attack, and then jumped the rail down to the ground and ran for the car a block and a half away where Megan and my sister were giggling like schoolgirls. We watched from afar as the lights came on, and as they attempted to open the door, then the window, and then watched as they frantically tried to figure out what to do, laughing our asses off the whole time.

It’s one of the best pranks I’ve ever pulled, hands down. We drove away laughing and didn’t think much of it again.

Until family dinner the next Sunday. When Megan and I arrived, Sybil was in the middle of a tremendously over-dramatic recounting of how gangsters had terrorized them by sealing them in their apartment a few days back, and how traumatized she was that she lived in an apartment that a drug dealer had clearly inhabited previously, and on and on and on. I was on the verge of interrupting her to burst her bubble of gangster tales and Soprano-like hijinks when I got the look from Megan, so I shut my mouth and said nothing, but pretended to empathize with her tale of criminal mischief and gangland warfare while laughing myself to tears on the inside.

Fast-forward about 3 weeks. Megan and I are hanging out with my sister and Vince again. It’s Friday, we’re bored, and then someone says it:

We could mess with Moron and Sybil…

Again, I have no recollection of who brought it up, but it didn’t take long before we were at Albertson’s to buy another broom, another 25’ of nylon cord, and another roll of duct tape. Within 30 minutes of deciding to do the deed, I was jumping the rail as Vince came running around the corner from behind the apartment for the second time that month. We made it to the car before we busted out laughing ourselves into tears. The four of us laughed so hard and so long that my sides hurt for days afterwards, no lie.

Again, we didn’t think much more of it (except for the fun we had thinking of what epic tale Sybil would make up this time).

Until Sunday dinner came around again. I remember very clearly sitting on the fireplace hearth next to Sybil when she began telling another overly-dramatic account of how gangsters had again terrorized them because they’d been mistaken for drug dealers (and if you’ve never met my brother I can assure you there’s no earthly reason you would ever make a mistake in judgment so colossal as to think he was a drug dealer), and on and on and on. I couldn’t take it any more. Half of me wanted acknowledgement for this epic prank, and the other half just wanted to expose this bullshit story she was telling, so I interrupted her mid-sentence and said simply “it wasn’t gangsters. It was me.”

Now, mom was absolutely horrified that I would do something so terribly malicious, which kinda surprised me since she’s known me for so long and is pretty well aware of most of the dumb/mean/creative stuff I’ve done in the past, but the important part isn’t that mom was freaking out on me for being the devil incarnate. No, the important part is that when I told her that it had been me, Sybil’s eyes narrowed to slits like they were about to focus a wicked laser beam that would bore right through my black heart and leave nothing but a pile of ash to blow away in the fierce tempest of her anger. Only she didn’t shoot any lasers. She didn’t even yell or scream at me. She just got up and walked out of the house. A few seconds later, Moron’s cell phone rang. Sybil was calling him from my moms driveway and demanding that he come outside and take her home. He of course complied, and I caught all kinds of hell from my family, which in truth, wasn’t entirely undeserved.

I never saw her again, and a few weeks later she moved out and filed for divorce.

Now, am I directly responsible for the divorce? Not exactly. I mean, I didn’t marry her. That was Moron’s choice, not mine. And I’m sure that there was more going on than just me and Vince pulling a prank or two, but I gotta think that what we did had something to do with it, and I suppose I should feel a little bad about that, but I don’t. I absolutely adore Moron’s new wife. She’s sweet and refreshing, and she’s good for him.

Sao that’s the tale of how I caused my brothers divorce using nothing more than a broom handle, some nylon cord, and a roll of duct tape. Truth is, I could laugh right now just thinking about it. Is that wrong?