The Battle of Dairy Queen

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."
- Sun Tzu, the Art of War

OK, using a Sun Tzu quote might be overdoing it a little bit...but this is how we felt in the late summer of 1998.  We being, of course, the towns of Foxboro and Mansfield.  It all started on the football field, (where else.)  During our summer passing league my Foxboro Warrior high school football team played against the Mansfield Hornets.  They were the biggest pains in our asses all through high school.  We played them every Thanksgiving.  We hated them.  So we talked shit, and they talked shit back...and at some point it was suggested that we square off in the local Dairy Queen parking lot. 

Surely that was just kids being kids and nothing would come of that.

We went that night, to the parking lot, just to be safe....nobody from Mansfield showed up.  Just as we thought, nothing would come from these shenanigans.  Except I was hanging out with a few of my friends the next night.  Back in the day I was about the only one who had a cell phone, so when I got a call from a strange number, I answered.  It was a frantic dude from my school, not even a football player, just another senior.  Now the friends I was with were all girls, but I was summoned.  "Vin, you gotta get your ass to Dairy Queen, they're here!"  And so we went.

"We gotta go!"  Now the girls were obviously in no mood to fight, but I wasn't about to let that get in the way of my pride.  We drove strait there.  Took us 5 minutes, and when we got there, it was like a fucking hornet's nest, no pun intended.  I jumped out of the car and immediately looked for answers. "What the fuck happened, I thought this was supposed to go down last night?"  I learned that a bunch of 'them' had shown up, phone calls were made for reinforcements on both sides, and next thing you knew, it was a standoff.  There were even kids there that had graduated last year, two years ago....maybe even three....There was no Eisenhower-like, Operation Overlord military strategy...it was us on one side, shoulder to shoulder...them on the other side of the parking lot.  I believe one of them had a small dog...

The dog actually set the whole thing off.  It barked, onc of us yelled that he'd kick that fucking dog across the street, and we charged.  The adrenaline took over and I don't remember the next minute or two.  I just know that I swung a few times, hit a kid, and then I was getting my head slammed against the side of the vehicle.  One of my fellow brawl buddies ripped the kid off me.  I was up, and blindly swinging again.  There was anarchy everywhere.  Apparently those pussies brought weapons, cause a couple of our big guns got hit with some home-made, medieval type devices that were later learned to cause some pretty bad damage.  Anyways, after what seemed like half a second, I was the only one left in the parking lot...well, and my girlfriends.  Next thing I knew, a cop slammed my face against the hood of his cruiser, which actually fucked me up more than the actual fight.  I forget what the fuck he asked me, I was concussed, so the girls talked to him, made up some bullshit about me being a victim of circumstance, and we were out of there.

My friend Lola bought a pint of ice cream and held it to my jug while I tried to shake the cobwebs.  They dropped me off and made me promise not to go to sleep.  (Apparently they had read on Webmd.com that you weren't supposed to sleep with a concussion....hold on a second, was the Internet around back then?  Shit I don't remember....either way, they told me not to sleep.)  My friend Lola even called me in the middle of the night to make sure I was awake.  I lied and told her that I was, but I slept like a baby that night. 

I woke up the next day and felt like a train hit me, but I felt awesome at the same time.  A good old fashioned ass kicking fest in a parking lot.  Ahhh....high school.  I remember that Monday morning and the stories that were passed all around the school.  Kids were in with busted up faces and bruised knuckles.  The whole fight probably lasted a minute, maybe two, before the cops scattered everyone, (except me.)  Everyone had a story.  "Dude, did you see me smash that dude against the Dairy Queen Window!"  "That was sick, did you see me smash that kids face into the pavement?"  "I saved Vinny from getting his head smashed into a car!"

Of course, now that we're in our 30's, and even for a long time since high school ended...many of us have mended ways with our fiercest rivals and the two towns get along and we're all friends with each other....except on Thanksgiving.  Great times!

Somebody That I Used to Know

I know it's the name of a Gotye song, and I shamelessly stole it for the title of this post, but hang in there.

My youngest sister turns 25 this month.  She's almost 7 years younger than me, and you would think that siblings, especially of the opposite sex, so many years apart, would not get along whatsoever.  For a long time, that's exactly how it was.  I didn't even know her. 

To begin to describe how somebody has matured over the years, I think it's prudent to first describe how that person used to be.  To say that my sister was a complete bitch when she was a teenager is more of an understatement than saying O.J. had a bit of a temper.  She was a C-word.  In any other post, I would spell it out for you, but you all know the meaning. 

It's a tough thing to say you hate a sibling, but damn it was pretty close to it.  From the time I was about 18 and she was just becoming a teenager, we couldn't be further apart in every aspect.  I was no hero when I was a teenager, but I played sports, got whatever grades I felt like getting, ( I underachieved), I had a good amount of friends, etc.  Sissa was like any other 13 year old, rebellious, teenage girl, except multiply that by about a million.  She was downright nasty.  She treated my mom like garbage.  She told the rest of my siblings and myself to shut the fuck up and stay out of it when they fought.  She did whatever she wanted.  She was spoiled.  She went out for the night and didn't come home. 

Some of it I'll blame on my mom, and my mom will say the same thing.  She just couldn't battle with my Sissa.  It was too exhausting, and my mom had no choice but to just give up.  So I tried to get her to turn it around, and I couldn't either.  I was the oldest, and like any other teenager, I had my battles with my mom too, but I couldn't stand the way Sissa treated her. It made me sick.  There was a screaming match just about every day for 5 years or so.  She hung out with shitty people, she dropped out of high school and moved to South Carolina with my mom.  She leached off of her.  She got a hillbilly piece of white trash boyfriend who stole from my mother and then she defended him.   She moved back to Massachusetts to live with my father, but got kicked out, so she moved into a hotel room with the white trash kid.  *Side note, if the piece of shit white trash kid lived any closer to Massachusetts, my brother and I would have saw to it that he would be a corpse by now.*   She smoked weed, she smoked cigarettes.  She moved home and stole cars from both parents and a step-parent, crashing one of them, and not giving one shit.  She got other boyfriends, (who subsequently got beat up by my brother and I.)  She couldn't get a job, not that she tried that hard, if at all.  I could go on about more specifics, but this is supposed to be a positive story, and I don't want to embarrass her any more than I already have.  I will say that she was the worst person I knew on the entire planet.  Those who know the McRoberts family and have for a long time know what I'm talking about.

Something happened to Sissa in her early 20's.  She got pregnant.  I know...downhill from there, right?  It was right around the same time my then wife got pregnant with my first son.  I thought that I had it all figured out.  A wife, a kid on the way.  I was resentful that I had "done things right" and now my thunder would be stolen by my least favorite person because she got knocked up.  I was sure it would be a disaster.  I believe I even threw an office chair through my drywall because I was so pissed.  Anyone else with the personality of Sissa would have probably went into a downward spiral.  I just pictured her overdosing on meth while she was 7 months pregnant or something.  I was literally terrified of how this would turn out.  I figured it would surely destroy our family.  I hoped she would have an abortion.  What an awful thing to think, looking back. 

I could not have been more wrong.  If anyone really knows me...you KNOW how difficult it is for me to admit being wrong, because it literally has only happened like 2 or 3 times in my life.  I was SO wrong.  I still don't know what happened exactly.  Maybe some kind of super mutated mom gene kicked in or something, but she took her pregnancy every bit as serious as my wife and I took ours.  She moved in with my mom, who had become pretty sick.  She did all the right things to get the help she needed.  She got a job.  She worked so hard to get her G.E.D.  She helped my mom pay the bills that she couldn't pay for by herself any more.  She started talking to me and my brother.  (Trid had become closer to her before this time.)  Her demeanor changed.  She was a different person.  She was somebody that I used to know, but was now completely different.  She stopped swearing.  She quit smoking.  She was excited to be a mom.  She was excited to be an aunt.  She was stoked that our kids were going to be born around the same time. 

I remember a heart to heart that my Sissa and I had on the phone maybe half-way or more through the pregnancies.  I thought I was going to be the stern older brother and talk to her like I had it all figured out and she would HAVE to listen to me or she wouldn't survive. I'll never forget that phone call, because she changed my whole perception of who she was as a person.  I got off the phone and was so happy I think I might have even cried.

In the summer of 2009, my son was born.  Sissa might have been the happiest person aside from my wife and I.  It was hard to explain.  I think it made her that much more excited to be a mom.  Exactly 4 weeks later to the day, her daughter was born.  She took on motherhood like it was in her the whole time...like it was no big deal.  She was a single mom.  Yeah, the father helped, when he could...but they weren't destined to stay together.  I'm pretty sure Sissa knew that from the beginning.  It didn't matter.  She stayed living with my mom, and in addition to taking care of her newborn daughter, she took care of my mom.  I think if the Hunger Games was real, she might have even volunteered to be one of the girls in the battle...that's how strong she had become.

I can't decide if it happened gradually or if it was like a switch.  My sister and I had a common bond now.  Since our kids were born, we've been closer than ever before.  It was like I had a new sister that I never knew I had before, and it was great.  It was special to me.  She called me...all the time.  She came and visited me. Sissa...the girl I hated as a teenager.   She came to visit me when nobody else would.  She would call me when nobody else would.  My family was there for me when I got divorced, but nobody more so than Sissa.  I thought all along that I had it all figured out, that I would have the big family and the happy marriage and the house.  I couldn't have had it more wrong.  While my sister went through one of the greatest transformations one could go through, it made her tougher than granite.  And I was the one who fucked up...not her.  I was so smart and did things right and she was a fuckup who would surely be a shitty mom.  There is no right way to do things.  I know that now and I didn't know it then.  My sister knew something, somehow, that I didn't.  How could this have happened?  I still have no idea.

I get along great with my whole family.  My brother has been my best friend since he got out of high school.  Trid and I are only a couple years apart and have been close since high school.  I was captain of the boys track team, she was captain of the girls track team.  We partied together, we had a lot of the same friends.  My parents have always been there for me.  I'd like to think that even though I'm not perfect, I've made them both proud over the years.  My uncles and aunts and cousins have always been close to me, (save for a couple...different story, different day.)  My grandmother might be my favorite person in the world, and I am openly her favorite grandchild. 

Despite all that, Sissa has become my closest ally.  She's the one I call when I'm having a bad day, and I've had plenty of bad days.  She calls me to see how I'm doing.  One day, when I had no money and my son was sick, she bought medicine and a thermometer to my apartment for me.  I couldn't buy medicine for my son, and my little sister, who I didn't even know when we were growing up, was there for me when nobody else was.  She helped me more than anyone with my son's 3rd birthday, knowing how important it was to me.  The cousins get along great.  Her daugher wants to "marry" my son when they grow up.  They're so damn adorable together.  We help each other take care of my mom.

I don't know if it's fair to say that my neice saved my sister's life.  I think it might be fair to say that they saved mine.  By becoming close to me, someone I can rely on whenever I need her, she's reminded me how important family is.  I love my sister who I barely knew existed when we were kids...who I despised as a teenager, and who I would take a bullet for now as an adult.

I love my sister, but what makes me feel even better, is how happy she's made her older brother.  Thank you for showing me the real way...not the way that I thought it should be.  I love ya so much, and I'm so happy that we've become the siblings that we always should have been.  I can't wait for so many more happy times we'll have together, and with our kids growing up together. 

I can say with no trepidation that teenage Sissa is just somebody that I used to know.  Now....I'm so very proud of you.  Happy birthday.

P.S. consider this my birthday card. Ha!