thursday edition

I'm sitting at a partially-cleared kitchen table, but for a plate of fresh apples slices and half-full glasses of water. It's 15 minutes post-dinner and my 17 year-old brother is sprawled out on the family room floor, his hands behind his head. He's leisurely taking in the evening while I edit his seven page research paper on global warming. His shoes (which we've all managed to trip over our way to the table) are directly in the path of traffic leading to the deck doors, which he's left wide open. Just as I start in on the importance of knowing who your writing audience is, he asks me for the 150th time to call out the the door for the dog. (After nine years, she (the dog) has developed quite the selective hearing.)

Five minutes later, minutes more leisurely for some than others, my brother looks up at me. "Did you know Chewy's (the dog) theme song for life is that song by Michael Jackson, that goes...He starts singing the lyrics to "Bad." "Because she's a bad dog (she's not) and because she's both black and white." I lift the pencil from the page and stick it behind my ear. "Huh? And more importantly, that's not how it goes," I inform him. I sing the correct lyrics, as he ignores me and skips up the stairs, still singing the wrong words. (I hate it when people sing the wrong words.) I focus my attention back on the paper, circle a sentence where there's a dangling participle, and have a flashback to the day when Mrs. Lake used her red pen to write "d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y" around the entire page of my essay, her teacher tongue-in-cheek way of making sure I never forget that an "i" follows the "n." Not an "e." Worked like a charm. Haven't spelled it wrong since.

Rich bounds down the stairs, ipod in hand and buds in his ears. He's snapping his fingers and singing the lyrics, word for word, or so he says. I told him I needed proof; he needed to share his earphones so I could confirm that I was indeed right. I reach out my hand for an ear bud. Ignoring me, he heads for the cupboard and comes back with the karaoke microphone. "I know this isn't the most convenient way, but it will work," nodding reassuringly. He grabs the mic, sets one ear bud on the table, and leaves the other in his ear. He puts the mic up to the bud on the table and before I knew it it was like the King of Pop himself was moon walkin' right there in our family room. As for the lyrics, turns out we're both right. And to think I thought I had him.

I step down as the Bad Lyric Expert, and resign to the task at hand: global warming, leaving my leisurely brother break dancing. Siting the paper I tell him that I don't know what it means that congress wants to put caps on companies regarding global warming; that he needs to explain what caps are. "Why?" (This is his brilliant retort to any critique I suggest.) Because I'm only a partially informed audience, I tell him. I know that global warming is an issue, but I am not informed as to what is happening to stop the progression. "So I should say that caps are..." "Yes," I tell him, after he's given me a brief oral explanation. "Write that." A few pages later, I read him a sentence about the involvement of China's global warming efforts with the U.N. I tell him to write out the words United Nations, to which he replies, (are you ready?) "Why?" Then he says, in his signature I'm-17-and-trying-to-be-annoyingly-cute-and-sarcastic voice, "So do I have to explain China, too? Do I have to say 'China is a country with this really long wall...'" he trails off. (I was going to tell him he had to start with Pangaea, but...) The ear buds go back in his ears.

Out of my periphery, I see Rich shaking his hips, ever so slightly, elbows bent, hands in the air, fists bopping with the music. I know he won't stop until I acknowledge his Elvis-like swinging, so my head turns in his direction and I pretend I'm amused. "Go sharpen this, " I say, handing him my pencil. And, as he marches off to the study towards the pencil sharpener, I look out past the deck onto the lawn where the dog has settled on the green grass (which we should be grateful for because, you know...global warming and all.) I replay the events of my day, enjoying the brief moment to myself as the (correct) lyrics of "Bad" run in a loop through my head.