The Tree

I guess I should explain a bit about my family.

From the outside we probably look sickeningly typical. Two parents. Three kids. A cat. All living in a two-storey house in the suburbs.

But let me tell you, from the inside, we're anything from typical. I don't pretend to be anyone's idea of an ideal son (or brother, or friend, or cool kid at the high school, for that matter) but somehow I'm the normal one in this family. Scary thought.

My parents, Stan and Shiela, are in their early forties and have somehow managed to hold down decent jobs for the past couple of decades. Dad's the head librarian at the city library and mom is some sort of efficiency expert. Basically she goes into businesses and says, "You people waste a load of time/energy/money/brain cells," and tells them how to fix things. As far as I can tell, she is reposible for a third of the unemployment in three counties.

It's their hobbies that makes my parents odd, mostly. Mom has started knitting works of art. Literally. A few years back, she gave me a sweater for my birthday, featuring some hideous interpretation of Van Gogh's Starry Night. She practically stuffed me into it, proud as punch, and sent me off to school. Impressionism and homeknitted wear do not make for easy social integration. I wore my coat almost the entire day, until the teacher assumed I was having "the chills" and sent me to the school nurse to be checked out.

Then there's Dad. He changes hobbies more than most kids take showers. Two months ago, it was sword swallowing, but after a terrifying birthday party and a visit to emergency that was nixed. Next was going to be water polo, but he didn't have much luck recruiting players to start a recreational league in the town. Lately it's been the trombone. I try to be out of the house as much as possible.

As for the kids, there's me who, at 17, is the oldest and dullest, but when I look at the other two, I'm happy to have that distinction.

Allie is 14. What's most noticeable about her place in our house is that it's usually vacant. She was sent to boarding school the year she turned 13. Wait. I guess "sent" isn't the right word. "Was finally allowed to attend" would be better. From the time she was six or seven, she pestered Mom and Dad to send her to boarding school -- no specific explanation, just an obsession which stuck around much longer than expected. When she turned 13, she successfully argued that she was now a teenager and was therefore old enough to live away from home. She attends The Pennington Academy, an all-girl school about two hours from our house. We see her on holidays, long weekends, and whenever. Come to think of it, maybe she was onto something.

Finally, there's Stanley, Jr. who at seven is a bit too analytical for his own good. Personally, I think he needs an analyst. He wears this battered blue suit jacket and some sort of tie almost all the time, even when he's playing outside. He asks lots of questions, which is fine sometimes, but not so fine if you're in the middle of a movie, almost at the end of a hard level in Crash Mandarin, or trying desperately to look nonchalant at the food court in the mall. My big question is why's he Stanley, Jr. when I'm the first born?

See? I'm looking at what I've written and one thing becomes clear: with a family like this, I don't stand a chance.