happy birthday dear matthew

8/24/99

Matthew, for those of you who don't know, is my younger brother. He turned 22 today. Way to make me feel old.

My mom called last week to tell me the latest Matt-story. Matt's one of those guys who gets busted doing the weirdest shit. I used to do some weird shit, but I didn't get caught. Well, that's a story for another day, anyway. Matt-antics are family folklore.

My brother's a musician. Runs in the family. He played tuba in high school, and he was damn good, but it's not the kind of thing you can keep up unless you study in college. He's also a pianist and a fantastic guitarist. The guitar is his main instrument now, I think.

So anyway, he's been in rock bands ever since high school. He does this weird thing when he's tuning or strumming the guitar: he holds the pick between his teeth. Now you know where this is going—my mom always told him NOT to do that. BAD idea. In one ear and out the other.

Last week, while practicing with his band, my brother swallowed a plastic guitar pick.

Of course, it didn't go straight down. Course not. It lodged in his esophagus, which I can imagine would be pretty painful. Off to the emergency room, escorted by his friend, Shannon.

My brother's a crazy-looking guy. Well, I think he's hot, but you know. He's about 6'8", last I heard, with blond hair that's often quite long, and huge red sideburns. The family joke is that he dresses "like Kramer." Mostly he wears polyester buttondown shirts and polyester dress pants, and steel-toed work boots. Come on—you try finding clothes for a guy that size. Shannon's a trip, too—I think he's totally hot, but grownups don't dig the giant rasta dreadlocks.

You can only guess what the ER staff thought when these two guys stumbled in, shouting that Matt had swallowed a guitar pick. Matt's side of the story: when he was lying on the bed, trying to get comfortable with a sliver of lucite wedged in his chest, he heard the doctors muttering "tox screen" in the doorway. How could this dumbass NOT be wasted?

My brother does not drink. Totally doesn't approve of alcohol or drugs, at all. At least, he didn't the last I knew. Whatever—his tox screen was negative, and they gave him a Valium IV. When that didn't work, they just conked him with some morphine and let him sleep till morning. In the morning his colon doctor came in (Matt has ulcerative colitis) and said, "Hey, I don't usually get to work on this end...." He scoped around a bit and then plucked the guitar pick out of Matt's chest.

***I wonder if doctors keep a collection of the stuff they take out of patients, the way I keep stuff I've taken out of tubas?***

This is only the latest in the Matthew Chronicles. A couple years ago, Matt was working as a custodian in a church. He'd go in late in the afternoon and clean up, set up for services or dinners, and they let him practice the piano there. He was fired after he was caught playing basketball in the church gymnasium one night, wearing the minister's robes.

I don't know how old he was, 7 or 8, I guess, when this one happened: he and our cousin Michael were wandering around on our grandparents' farm in Indiana, when they happened into the wrong pasture. Pedro the Bull chased them down and Matt strung himself up on the barbed wire fence. Luckily, the electricity was off that day.

Let's see...all kinds of incidents involving the car.... Once he left his coat in our father's van and the coat was stolen. When the thief tried on the coat, he found the keys to the van in the pocket. Another time, Matt was driving home and got pulled over for speeding. He nervously bit his nails as the cop walked to the window, and Matt accidentally bit off the tip of his own thumb. When the officer asked for Matt's license, it had drips of wet blood on it.

When he worked as a dishwasher in a local buffet restaurant, he once witnessed a fight between two other employees. Just watched. When it blew over and the guys asked him why he hadn't stopped them or done anything, he replied, "I don't like either one of you."

Now he works in a hippie bookstore in Ann Arbor. The guy I used to grapple with—Chinese Chin Torture!—turned out to be one of the coolest, most creative people I know. I miss my brother. If I thought he had Internet access, I might give him the url for this entry, but that would violate the gruffness code we have between us.

So: happy birthday to Matt. You rock.