My brothers and I weren't particularly mean, on the whole, but we could certainly be cruel at times. Poor Tony, as the youngest child, suffered most.

We each took turns carrying firewood from the woodshed to the porch, often doing this chore in the dark. Tony was scared of the dark, and I knew it. Sometimes when it was his turn to bring in wood, I'd taunt him. "Be careful out there," I'd say. "I think I saw a wolf." He'd cry to mom or dad that he didn't want to bring in the wood because he might get eaten by a wolf.

Or maybe it was Tony's turn to water the nursery stock. "Wow," I'd say. "That's sure a long way from the house. Don't stay out too long — I think I saw a white wolf yesterday. (Though I might have been wrong, it might only have been a grey wolf.)"

I invented a whole taxonomy of wolves. There were white wolves and grey wolves and black wolves and brown wolves. Each was vicious in its own peculiar way. The wolves only came around when Tony needed to go outside.

I could be a mean brother.

Jeff could be mean, too. Once he and his friends came back from Grandpa's woods carrying a half-full can of Mountain Dew. "Do you want the rest of this?" he asked Tony. Tony accepted the gift eagerly, but when he took a sip, he spit it out and began to cry. It wasn't Mountain Dew at all, but a different yellow liquid.

Why did we act like this? Why do I continue to act like this? (My sense of humor remains mildly sadistic. Kris often asks me why I think it's funny to torment the cats, or to tease her, or to make fun of other people.)

This is easy to answer, but not as easy to fix. I learned this behavior from my father, and he probably learned the behavior from his father. My dad modelled this behavior, and I was a quick study.

Sometimes it's as if I'm outside my body, watching myself do something that I know is dumb or wrong or annoying, something like my father might have done, yet I cannot stop myself. This is how I'm programmed. This is a learned behavior.

I look at the kids I know today, and I watch their parents, and I wonder: What behaviors are these parents modelling for their children? When these parents dream about their grown children, do they imagine that their sons and daughters will smoke? Will speak ill of others behind their backs? Will watch television constantly? Will lose their temper? Will spend money frivolously?

(Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I could do any better than the parents I know. Not at all. There's a reason we don't have children. I'm merely saying that, as a third-party, I may be observing patterns of which the parents are completely unaware, patterns of behavior that they'll regret in the future.)

How do we overcome our learned behaviors? Can we? It seems that no matter how much we loved our parents, they possessed certain traits we vowed we'd never acquire. Like it or not, we often incorporate these very traits into our own personalities.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — Ants of Mystery   Our ant problem continues unabated as the little bastards completely ignore the ant traps we set out for them. Also, I need a new grill.

2003 — Snatch, turn, suck, drop, hop   In the tree is a tiny bird, probably a finch, hopping along one branch, snatching up blossoms in its beak, turning them around, consuming some small part, and then dropping the blossoms to the ground.

2002 — U2: A Love Story   One day this guy brought in a tape by a band I'd never heard of: U2. "Ha. What a funny name," I told him. "Yeah," he said, "but they're really good."

2001 — Sam the Shih Tzu   I'm not sure how the dog avoided being hit, but it did, and I was able to get traffic stopped so that I could retrieve it and carry it back to its owners.