1986
by Stephanie
Koogler
1986.
I am sitting cross-legged on the hard wood floor of my brother’s
bedroom. Stephen is 17, larger than
life and the embodiment of all I see as belonging to the “grown-up world.”
The late afternoon sun casts wide slats of light on the floor and my
brother stands there in his grey tux (pink cummerbund), crooning into a
hairbrush microphone, the plaintive refrain of Madonna’s “Crazy for You.”
It is prom night. His date
is Carmen. Or maybe Anne.
(He had several girlfriends that year.)
I am a 6th grader, blessed with having the most popular senior
at BPHS for my brother.
I am shocked when Allana Ary tells me
her sister Audrey hates my brother. Surely
that can’t be. Who would have
reason to hate my brother? The year
I was in 3rd grade, Stephen dated my teacher--Mrs. Shogren’s--daughter.
For my birthday, Mrs. Shogren made me a card that said, “Who’s that
boy with a great smile like yours that’s always hanging around my house?’
I still have that card. Audrey
must have been jealous.
I
scratch the ankle of my left foot with the toes of my right and watch my brother
splash on a healthy dose of cologne, from the bottle shaped like a gas pump.
As the song ends he bends down and solemnly tells me that “Crazy for
You” is Their Song. His and
Anne’s. Or maybe Carmen’s. I
solemnly nod back, not exactly sure what you do with your own song, but hoping
someday to be important enough to own one.
When I was 3, my brothers had a paper
route. I remember running outside
to meet them every day as they came home, loaded with Penny Savers to bundle and
deliver. I got to help strap the
fat red rubber bands around each paper. One
day as I ran out to meet them I missed one of the cement steps and went
sprawling down the others, leaving the skin of my knees on the concrete behind
me. Stephen picked me up and
carried me inside, laid me on the couch and helped my mother clean and bandage
my cuts and scraps.
The
hairbrush microphone becomes a regular hairbrush again.
Mom comes in to inspect the final product.
As much as I love my brother I know my mother loves him more.
More than me, that is. It’s
our favorite complaint and the rest of us bandy it around like a baseball when
we are feeling particularly injured in one way or another.
Mom always loved him best.
When I was 8 my brother was hit by a
car. His gym bag got tangled
in the spokes of his 10-speed and he flipped his bike over into on-coming
traffic. I was sent to Mrs.
Kann’s house and her daughters told me that he had been run over by the car
and was probably going to die. By
the time I got to visit him in the hospital, he looked somewhat better than
dead, much to my relief. I stood in
the doorway mentally reviewing every move before I made it.
I debated sitting on his bed before I actually did.
Later, after Stephen stopped screaming, my mom pulled me aside and
explained what traction was. The
next time I came the nurses had little signs posted that said “please do not
sit on the beds.”
Stephen
makes the final adjustments on his attire.
Tonight he is driving my parents’ car, instead of the old green ‘69
Chevy truck that my brothers shared as teenagers. He hits pause on the tape deck and the Madonna tune stops
abruptly. I know I will sneak back
in here when he is gone, and play it again.
I will climb out on the roof of the porch beneath his bedroom.
I will lie on my back and look at the stars and listen to my brother’s
tape.
All of my friends--with the possible
exception of Allana Ary--are in love with my brother. I have sailed through 6 whole years of grammar school (7 if
you count kindergarten) on the Sibling Recognition Clause.
I do not know that next year--with all brothers grown and out of the
house--my parents will uproot me from my happy little Iowa town and plunk me
down in the middle of a dirty Chicago suburb, to suffer in anonymity through the
torturous 7th grade. I
do not know about a place called the Persian Gulf that will become the site of
the first armed conflict that I will be old enough to remember.
I am vaguely aware that the failure of something called an O-ring
recently caused the space shuttle Challenger to explode shortly after launch,
and that I was somehow spared witnessing the whole thing by a well-timed trip to
the drinking fountain. I do not
know that life eventually makes you weary, that 17 is not as magical as it
appears to my 6th grade mind, and that 27 is less magical still.
That 30 looms ahead, fraught with job changes and mortgage payments, more
broken hearts and still the question of what I want to be when I grow up.
I do not know that life will someday soon rear up and bite me in the ass.
For now, Madonna has a hit single and my brother has a rented gray tux. “Back to the Future” has hit the theatres, “Dirty Dancing” has not. I play flute in the band and shortstop in Little League. The matters that weigh most on my mind are upcoming Jr. High cheerleading tryouts and my 6th grade science project on nuclear power with Jens Norgaard. My older brother is dating a girl named Anne. Or Carmen. 10 years from now he will marry a girl named Mary and I will still be jealous. But for now, it is 1986 and I am still a kid.
Stephanie
Koogler
skoogler18@hotmail.com
Bio:
Stephanie is self-employed as a professional studio piano instructor, and lives
in the Phoenix area.