Tag: sarcasm with children

My brother Jobe who was number five in the family line-up was a pure handful from the moment he was born.  He was a cuter-than-cute red-headed, freckled-face boy who even as a baby was making headlines around the bridge table as Mom would tell the other mothers how Job had climbed out of his crib already.  This was before he could walk.  It began there.

A couple of years later, when all was quiet and perhaps Mom was baking something in the small kitchen in the Willows (our crowded townhouse on the Main St of Walden, Ontario, ( Let the Games Begin 🏀 ), little industrious Job climbed up on the stylish chrome and Formica table in the dining room eager to touch the glass chandelier. In that same dining room sat our beautiful upright piano that Mom had stylishly mac-tacked with orange and purple-petaled flowers (It was the 70s, Man).  Anyway, before he could stop himself, and with little pink tongue clamped to the right side of his mouth, he systematically dismantled the whole intricate chandelier, but not a piece of glass would touch the floor.  Four year-old Job had very carefully clutched each glass piece in his little hands and put each one down on the table top he was standing on… in exact order of its place aloft.  He took a three-dimensional glass chandelier and made it one-dimensional.  All Mom had to do later was carefully hook it all back up.  She was fascinated by his ability to do this, and so were we.

One time, at the camp where all nine of us moved for the summer months to be on the lake and running a tourist camp, when the lake was whipped up with white caps due to an off-shore wind, Jobe thought it would be interesting to push the twenty or so aluminum boats and canoes out into the water to watch the wind take them across the lake.  Imagine the spectacle that was.  A fleet of unmanned water craft afloat in a line across a choppy eight-mile lake.  Little Jobe was fascinated, jumping up and down, clapping and laughing devilishly and pointing a chubby finger at what he had done.  Mom and Dad and our four older siblings scrambled to get the boats back, some swimming out to them, some using a motorized boat to get them.  Who would think of doing such a thing…JOBE! Corporal punishment ensued.  (Corporal punishment was quite popular back then.)

In later years, Jobe would usually be the one getting into trouble and doing more and more high-risk things.  He would dive off the top of the diving tower and off Echo Rock and the Locks — these were all very high dives and more than a little dangerous.  Jobe was the only one of the seven of us to master the back-flip-and-a-half on the trampoline.  And when it came to water-skiing, he was quite impressive – slalom-skiing beautifully and even starting from the dock or the water on one-ski, which took a great deal of strength, balance and coordination.  His physicality was confident and true.  He was physically gifted. Mr Laset attested to this fact when I called him last winter to casually affirm my Elementary school memories when forty years ago he had been our beloved coach.  In gymnastics, Job would fly off the spring board, catching tons of air before his hands met the leather box-horse and with high hips he would execute a beautiful hand spring.  At the lake, Jobe would even ski down the Trouble River a twisty-turny, black-watered mysterious river that we all thought of as bottomless due to scary stories that we would tell by the camp fire.

Some of Jobe’s escapades required funding that he just didn’t have, nor could he easily earn.  Luckily, he had worked out a solution for his shortfall.  But first, you need to know the layout of the cottage that we called ‘The Office’, because the layout was key.  The Office had two bedrooms on the main level.  In one room was Mom and Dad’s twin beds (stylish at the time, no idea why) and a crib where Luke would sleep when he was a baby.  The neighbouring room had a double-bed where I and one or both of my sisters would sleep, and then above us, up a rickety ladder in the hallway, was ‘the loft’ where the three boys would usually sleep: Matt, Mark and Jobe.  The sides of the loft were open, such that those up there could look down through the rafters into the two bedrooms below.  Privacy?  I think not.  In fact, now that I am writing this, I remember a game in which we would reach way over on the rafters and then swing down over the beds below and drop down with a squeal, landing on the soft mattress, or anyone who happened to still be in bed.  (This was a forbidden activity, so only done when the adults were out of the office.)

So…Jobe’s funding…right.  Well, the ceiling was open into the loft, and when Dad would be inevitably taking a nap on a warm summer afternoon or on a rainy day, or on any day really, Jobe would spy Dad’s seldom-washed polyester double-knits hanging on the hook by the bedroom door.  Stealthily, hazel eyes rolling this way and that, with a fishing rod, and pink tongue stuck out just so, he would hook said pants and reel them up, ever so quietly, stealing glances down at Dad who was crashed out on the twin bed.  The pants would seemingly float up into the loft where he then would quickly reach his small sure hand into the right front pocket and take out the roll of cash from Dad’s polyester double-knits.  (Every summer, Dad would busily sell various items to campers: ice, worms, fuel – all for cash. Cash being cash, it was untraceable, so Jobe would help himself to a twenty or two (a small fortune back then) and he would be set for his next escapade.  Of course, his hazel eyes keenly watching Dad, face slightly flushed, he would then expertly reel the double-knits back down to the hanging place in Dad’s room, ensuring that any noise he made at all was made when the loudest cycle of the snore was emerging from Dad.  With the money, Jobe and I would sometimes go horse-back riding which back then was $5 per hour! Or, Jobe would buy gas to put in the Budd family’s motor boat tank for ever more water skiing.  We did get paid for chores at the camp, but not nearly enough for all that Jobe wanted to do.

One of the chores at the camp was the daily picking up of garbage using the big red wheel-barrow.  We had to wheel over the gravel roads around the 21 acres to each of the campsites and to the nine cabins and ask at the door for their garbage.  Then, to the upper or lower field, often rolling over a large rock and accidentally dumping the whole mound due to its precariousness in the wheel barrow.  With gloves on (in theory). we had to then sort it: burn the burnables in a huge 40-gallon barrel and pitch the cans, jars and bottles into the old open trailer that Dad would take to the dump every few weeks.  Sorting people’s garbage was really gross and more than a little dangerous; so was burning it, especially in a field of dry-as-bone hay.  We were burning garbage in a huge barrel at tender ages.  I would have been seven or eight and Jobe would have been ten or eleven.  I have no idea how we didn’t all have 3rd degree burns or didn’t lose an eye because something would inevitably smash or blow up.  Of course Job LIKED it when something smashed or blew up.  He would often HELP it to smash or blow up and then he would exclaim, ‘Morgan did you SEE THAT?!’ or ‘WATCH THIS!!’…BANG…  It terrified me.  I was often cowering and inching away as Jobe had his maniacal fun.  A side note: Jobe NEVER smashed beer bottles.  They were refundable and provided yet another nice little stream of income.

Jobe’s temper was also famous.  He would often be a happy-go-lucky youngster, looking for fun and loving to laugh.  But, often, he was treated meanly by our father…he wasn’t the quiet, obedient academic-type that Dad wanted in a son, I guess.  None of his sons were showing signs of being university types (at this point, Luke was too little to show the signs of his future studiousness).  Dad could be downright mean with biting sarcasm and cruel comments. He would say things like, “Jobe, you could have been a good hockey player, but, then you got hard to handle.” Dad would also be quite physical, grabbing an arm, pulling hair or an ear to propel one of his children in the direction of his choosing.  One Christmas, Dad wrapped up a used dictionary and put it under the tree for Jobe.  On the inside cover he had written: Have a read of this once in awhile.  You might learn something. From Dad.

I believe this treatment didn’t help Jobe to find his way very well. His temper would flare more and more as he got closer and closer to his teenage years.  Perhaps he would be building something with hammer and nails,  and if he missed that nail, there was a very good chance the hammer would end up in the lake and hopefully your noggin’ wasn’t in its flight path.

* * *

After Jobe got out of juvie, he went to live with our eldest sister Eva and her husband, Peter for a year due to he and Dad having serious personality conflicts. (A few years later, I would take a turn at living with Eva and Peter.  While living there, we forever have the funny story of Jobe’s attempt at reeling a box of beer up to his upstairs bedroom (a two-four!).  Unfortunately, he was caught due to its visibility when passing the main floor window.  Peter looked up to see a box of Labatt’s Blue floating by and thought he had better investigate.  He found Jobe leaning out his bedroom window, just about to haul in his case of beer.  Peter put the kibosh to the beer party 17-year old Job was planning on having in his bedroom.  Good try though.

Nowadays, Jobe is a farmer out in B.C..  We definitely do not see enough of his big smile, good heart or jovial laugh but, we will always have these memories to cherish, laugh and wonder at.  He certainly made memories, did my brother Jobe.

(all images are courtesy of google images)