The Hose

Evil

A TALE OF TWO FATTIES (PART 1)

My two youngest cousins are 9 and 12. Conveniently, the 9 year old weighs 90 pounds and the 12 year old weighs 120 pounds. Also conveniently, we (the older cousins) refer to them as the Fatty Brothers. The nickname started of course as a joke, but it kind of stuck and sometimes the meanness of it makes me feel bad. I first realized this when the older kid started to understand the meaning of Fatty Brothers and every time we used that term, he would protest:

"Don't. call."

At this point, he would need to pause and catch his breath.

"Me. That!"

But relatively speaking, being one half of the Fatty Brothers is still much better than his original nickname, the one we gave him before his younger brother popped onto the scene. See, the older one didn't start speaking until very late. He didn't even have the ability to babble, like most kids do before they learn how to form words. Instead, he just grunted. He would sit at the table and grunt to his dad and his dad would give him more food (more food!). He would run to his mom and grunt and his mom would give him and hug and say softly, "Aww, are they picking on you again?"

So naturally, we called him Grunty.

My sister hypothesized that Grunty might be retarded. At one point she even set a firm deadline, saying "If that kid doesn't start speaking within 6 months, I'd bet anything that he's retarded." I almost took her up on that bet just because betting on whether a family member is retarded is really damn funny.

(To be continued...)