Horatio

Horatio is my big brother. He was nearly man-sized by the time I turned four, so sometimes it felt like there were three adults in my family.

He was also smarter than me. When we played with army men, all of his guys had super weapons and flying packs. They looked just like my guys, but Horatio insisted that his were different. I held up one of my guys that looked the same as the guy Horatio had just flown from under the bed to a sniper position on his desk.

"Can this guy fly too?" I asked.

He compared the two identical army men, shook his head and handed mine back to me.

"No," he said, "your guy has a regular gun and can't fly."

So it was Horatio that taught me about lying, a lesson I've been grateful for ever since.

Of course not all his lies were intentional. One day before I was born he looked up at the dull February sky, and then across a blinding patch of icy snow and told our sister with great authority, "The only light in winter is the snow."

But I always believed him. When I was seven, a neighbor kid started bragging about how tough his sister, Kathy was. "Horatio could beat her up," I bragged.

"No, he couldn't," said the neighbor. "How old is your brother?"

"Fifteen!"

"Yeah, well Kathy is SIXTEEN!"

That night I asked my brother to prove how tough he was by beating up a sixteen-year-old girl. He refused, although he insisted it wasn't because he was scared. "He won't fight, but it's not because he's yellow," I told Kathy's kid brother the next day.

"Then why won't he fight?"

"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure Horatio has a good reason. I just can't figure out what it might be."

Years later, Horatio went off to Perversity University. They still wore gym uniforms back then and I stole his shirt first chance I got. I wore it constantly - so often I never found time to wash it. "Pee Yeww!" said Gilderfroom Hockinfielder as I walked into 8th grade English class.

"Yes," I said, "PU rocks!"

It also rocked because when I wore the shirt into the local package store, I could buy whatever I wanted. I'm not sure if they thought I went to Perversity University, or they just wanted me to buy my stuff and leave. Dozens of us at the Foster Brooks Middle School got our college-prep credits in binge drinking because of Horatio and his PU gym shirt.

But none of us could drink like Horatio's best friend, Tippy. Two days before Horatio got married; Tippy led a group of us out for my brother's bachelor party. The party consisted of eight hours of bar hopping. We had to go to several because I think Tippy drank each bar dry - at least of all the Budweiser. At 2 AM we ended up at Horatio's house and watched amazed as Tippy urinated on the hedge non-stop until 2:25.

"What kind of shrubs are those?" I asked my brother.

"When I planted them, they were boxwood." he said, "but now I guess they're Anheuser bushes."

Horatio is a Grandfather now and very pleased about it. His grandson is just getting the hang of walking and talking. I wonder if Horatio has already bought an army men video game so he can play with the little guy - with two identical armies...

Except that Grandpa's guys will have super weapons and flying packs.

Horatio and I are both getting more like Grandpa Simpson.  Won't this blog be great then?

O2

Oxygen to the brain – over-rated, or not? Those of you with remaining grey matter, discuss it among yourselves.

As we get closer (age-wise,) to the big sleep, small sleep becomes more problematic. Sprawling face-down half on the floor, half on the couch after copious beer doesn’t seem to work as well as it did in our late teens.

Now we’re told that alcohol-induced coma is unhealthy and kills brain cells.

And snoring, which was nothing more than a source of amusement to our friends (or annoyance to our partners,) is now a serious symptom of sleep apnea.

Apnea, like alcohol-induced coma, is unhealthy and kills brain cells.

You can’t shut your eyes for a minute without grey matter flying off into the nether regions. No wonder we elect the politicians we do – we are devoid of reasoning material.

Zombies aren’t just a fad on TV - they are us.

I’m not sure if we are more fragile than we were, or have developed a generational obsessive paranoia. Either way, I’m constantly worried that I’m falling apart.

But if this is true of us, shouldn’t it also have been true of generations past?

I remember being a kid watching Dad. Dad would sit in his recliner and snore so loud that he’d wake up the cat. Helix (the cat) looked at Dad with that haughty pissed-off look only disturbed cats can do, and wandered off to find a place where the floor boards weren’t rattling. All of us little Hausers giggled, hoping for another exploit of Dad’s sonorous power like the time his vocalizations vibrated the potted violet off the shelf and shattered the velveteened ceramic Elvis that Uncle Harvey had gotten Mom for Christmas.

The point is back in the sixties and seventies we weren't worried about Dad not breathing – to say nothing about the cat, the violet, or the ugly Elvis effigy. Maybe Dad, being a survivor of the depression and a veteran of WW2, was tough enough to go eight hours a night without O2.

We, on the other hand, are oxygen wimps. I blame Dr. Spock. He spoiled us all.

not

So I guess that not breathing while I sleep is a problem. I don’t want one of those CPAP mini-ventilators, cause I might be confused for a mostly dead organ donor waiting for a patient needing corneas.

Instead, I set a wedge under my pillow, a stiff band-aid across the bridge of my nose, a plastic horseshoe in my nostrils and a gag-inducing retainer in my mouth. I turn on the sound machine to Oceans 2, purge my sleeping area of blue light, and set my air cleaner to “puree.”

If I was capable with all that crap, I might sigh nostalgically, thinking of how little I appreciated Dad’s machismo as he sawed wood in his recliner.

Or my own back in the days of six-pack comas on available couch cushions.

Come to think of it, we really much concerned with brain health in the sixties.