I Now Pronounce you Father and Son

My brother Justin is the youngest of the four of us children. He has always lived at home with my dad; and since my father has been divorced since: forever. He and Justin have grown to live together very well.

Dad has the lower level. Justin has the upper level.

Dad pays all the bills. Justin takes out the garbage on Sundays.

Like an old married couple, they fall into routines easily; their latest includes going grocery shopping every Tuesday. Both of them hate grocery shopping so much, they turned the chore into a game. Their goal is to get in and out in under 30 minutes. They have strategically chosen Tuesday for two reasons: 1. new DVD’s are released on Tuesday and 2. half the American public is home in front of their televisions watching American Idol.

In exchange for our dad supporting Justin the only thing he asks is that he has a job.

While Justin was in college my dad didn’t care so much the type of work Justin had- - as long as he had a job. And on the other hand Justin has never been one to shoot for the moon. He is the type of guy that “goes with the flow,” or “doesn’t make waves.” Whenever I give Justin suggestions about what he should do with his life or his career or schooling he simply shakes his head in agreement and says: “Yeah, Okay, thanks Jay.” He does as he is told, does an excellent job and is content with his position- - honestly an employer’s dream, unless the employer requires him to be at work early in the morning.

A few years ago Justin was going through a rough patch; he had just been fired from his job at the local Wal-Mart, where he had worked for the past 2 and half years. He collected carts from the parking lot and pushed them into the store (they did not purchase one of those automatic cart pushers until after Justin was fired.) Now, keep in mind my family lives in a small city in Iowa. The summers are deathly hot and the winters are disturbingly cold. Justin pushed an enormous number of heavy, metal carts through the crazy Iowa climate: that included death defying humidity, sub-zero temperatures, ass-levels of snow, monsoons of rain, and a slight uphill incline to the front entrance to the store. My brother Justin has the calf muscles of a Greek god. He did all of this for little money and never once complained. So when he took a job at a different retail giant to work mornings unloading the trucks and stocking the shelves, everyone thought this was a promotion. The only catch-- the job started at 5 a.m.

My father on the other hand has always been very optimistic. “Just get up, put in full day’s work and be home by 2. Sounds like a good deal to me.” Dad though it was great. And so did Justin at first. No one except Justin truly knows how long he worked that early morning shift, but everyone in the family knows exactly how dad found out Justin stopped working that early morning shift.

Like Dad and Justin do, they fell in to a routine. Justin would take his shower at night, go to bed on the early side, wake up at the butt-crack of dawn, and leave for his day of work before the sun came up. Dad would wake up, switch the load of laundry he had started the previous day to the dryer, fold the clothes from the dryer and put a new load into the washer, take his shower, and then leave for his day of work.

Justin would come home, eat something, take a nap, and play some video games. Dad would come home, park on the side of the house so Justin could be sure to get out of the driveway without a problem the next day, have dinner, play some games, maybe watch a movie, and then go to bed himself. This was their routine for a few months- -or at least that is how dad had thought the weekdays were going.

Unbeknown to him, Justin had modified the routine ever so slightly.

Justin would still take his showers in the evening and go to bed relatively early, and Justin would still get up well before dawn and leave for work, it is here that the break in routine happens. Instead of driving to work Justin would drive his car around the neighborhood just out of dad’s sight. He would then walk back to the house, climb over the backyard fence, climb through his bedroom window and hang out in his room and wait there until dad left for work. At which time he was free to do whatever he wanted: go back to sleep, watch television, or play video games. His only responsibility was to make sure his car was parked back in the driveway before dad got home.

Like I said no one except Justin knows how long this new routine went on but like everything in the universe- - the only constant is change.

One morning while dad was making his way to the laundry room to change over the laundry he heard Justin’s television. Thinking it was rather loud and knowing it would be on all day or at least until Justin got home, he made his way upstairs to turn it off. He found the remote on the bed, turned off the television and threw the remote back onto the bed. Dad went back to his normal routine of showering getting ready. While on his way out of the house he stopped because he thought he heard Justin’s television again. He though: maybe he hadn’t actually turned it off or maybe while tossing the remote it had turned it self back on- - either way he would simply go back upstairs and turn off the television again.

He walked into Justin’s room and began to look for the remote control. It was not on the bed. He though: maybe when he had tossed it onto the bed it took a bad bounce and fell to the floor- - that must be what had happened because the television had somehow turned its self back on. He began to look for the remote on the floor. Not on the first side of the bed, so he made his way around to the other side of the bed. Not only did he find the remote, which was in Justin’s hand, he found Justin dressed in his work clothes, lying on the floor with half of his entire body hidden under the bed and the other half of his body, his leg, arm and head sticking out watching television. Shocked at what he saw he asked:

“Justin, what the hell are you doing?”

To which Justin replied: “What?”

After stumbling through his words and waiting for dad to calm down Justin told dad that he had been fired because they caught him punching in and sleeping in his car. As mad as he was, dad kind of understood. After all Justin was never a morning person.

After the incident it took a while for the two of them to fall back into a routine but they eventually did. The only difference is now Justin is supposed to pay rent, an incentive to work, dad thinks.

Fifty dollars a week.

I think dad has collected rest five times in three years. But that is what married couples do; they forgive and forget and keep on living.