Cool Man Dude

This morning one of the coolest guys on this side of the Anacostia, Potomac, and Mississippi crossed the border to head back to North Carolina. My brother David, cool-ass Dave, half of the self-described Cool-Man Dude hipsters.

Slow down, David has not always been every sister's dream. I wouldn't've said this about him, or claimed him at a bus station ten years ago. As he moved through each obnoxious phase, the three of took turns hating him and his very existence. Even distrusted our parents' sense of judgment for havnig and keeping him. He's been the annoying little brother who got everything dirty just as you finished it, washed it, dried it or put it on. He was the chubby pre-teen who redefined awkward with a fried chicken belly and matching watermelon head, mad at the world and the scale. The older brother who berated little sister's male callers, tantalized the hell out of her mesmerized friends, and delighted in it all with a devilish smile and commanding voice.

But through it all, we could not tell the bold-faced lie that denies his ridiculously dead-pan humor, self-righteousness ("Rhonda! I'm David! Don't you know???"), and classic charm.

You missed it when he uttered the infamous, "Dad, if I am brown, and dirt is brown, then why
do I have to wash my hands?" Or when he and his partner in crime laid in the gutter during a rain storm to feel the waterfall over their scrunched up faces. Or the day he discovered his thumbs don't match (we named them). We laughed for hours at his perplexed glances toward his asymmetrical appendages.

Earlier this summer we went fishing, and helped me on and off the boat. This is the shit that makes older sisters proud to death.

Yesterday, as I ranted and raved about the enormous pile of clothes in the laundry room, he thinks aloud, "Rhonda if we take the laundry out of the laundry room it'll just be the room." Aight, yo, you're funny.

Today he's striding into his junior year in college. English major, Education minor. Worked the hell out of his summer job. Digging this chick he met a while back. My patna Dave. See you at Thanksgiving.