The Oddball Archives

  Most of you know that whenever I sit down to think back, reminisce and recall on paper, especially where immediate family are concerned, I do so with the greatest respect and genuine love. It’s not my place to tattle on things that were done as children. We all do things that, in retrospect, serve to guide us along on the road we call life and make us all the better persons for that experience.

 

   That is to say, sometimes we screw up really bad.

 

   When I worked at KARN in Little Rock, my fellow workmate, ‘Morning Show’ co-host Sharon Lee, would look at what others may construe as a downright snafu-fubar situation and simply comment ‘It’s okay. No one died’. That has helped me deal with lots of situations throughout my life that range from a head-scratching ‘What was I thinking?’ to outright laying in a fetal position sucking my thumb and calling for mommy.

 

   Not that I did that many bonehead things, mind you, but there were instances I have looked back and literally kick myself over things I did. Sometimes, I did it over stuff I didn’t do.

   I don’t do that much anymore. I take pills now.

 

   Of course there were other teachers in my life. I have brothers and sisters from whom I took the occasional lesson and apply when and where necessary:

 

• Never interrupt a dog to see her new puppies. She gets very defensive and will bite you on the butt.

 

• Never mix karate and football. Feelings will get hurt. So will your spleen.

 

• Never do a stunt on a bicycle travelling down a hill greater than 25 degrees without brakes. Something, or someone, will get broken.

 

• Copying a circus act from the Ed Sullivan show and setting fire to a dining table chair will not endear you to your parents.

 

• Never antagonize a hornet’s nest without a clear escape route.

 

• When Mom says don’t chew the medicine, it’s best to swallow it whole, unless you just WANT to see your last meal again.

 

• Never try to stop a dirt-clod fight by hurling your own dirt clods. The evidence is the same and you will be punished with the real culprits.

 

• ‘Cute’ has the advantage over ‘right’. It is not fair, but often true.

 

That last one I learned from my younger brother Barry. He had the face for it. Later, he had the body for it. Most recently, he has proven to have the heart for it.

   Barry Stephen was the only one of four boys not born in October, so he got the best presents because Mom and Dad didn’t have to spread the funding out among three other kids. Because he was born in June, he had the added luxury of not having to contend with school on his special day, whereas the rest of us would usually get our presents in the morning, then wait through interminable hours of class time to get home to play with them. The only other alternative was to get our presents at night and then go immediately to bed.

 

   To the best of my knowledge, this situation backfired on him only once at the Riverdale Swimming Pool, when he jumped in the water and accidentally bit through his tongue. Mom recalled after they got home, Jackie called her in tears because she thought his injury was swelling up to the point that he might not be able to breathe. Mom remembered there were drinking straws in the house and calmly suggested making him a milk shake, which would bring down the swelling. We later had a birthday dinner for him at a fancy restaurant, but sadly, he was unable to eat his own cake. He had to settle for Birthday Jell-O.

 

   When I say Barry was ‘cute’ there is no wordplay involved here. Blonde hair, blue-green eyes depending on the sunlight, dimples…what was there not to like? The only major drawback he ever had as a child appeared after a day of heavy running and wheezing. Asthma. This only seemed to draw Mom closer to him to make sure he took his daily medicine.

 

   One would think with a malady like asthma, Barry would have grown up spindly and frail. This was not the case. What was ‘cute’ became ‘babe-a-licious’, and that’s not a word I use freely. I have it on good authority from a number of his fellow students, mostly of the feminine gender, that he was quite simply a babe magnet. Somehow, by the time we moved to Conway, he had found the time to bulk up, get into some serious sports like baseball and football, and fill out his uniform. Because he was asthmatic, we bigger kids were not allowed to overexert him. So, basically, he did it himself.
 
   In a family of our size, whatever material possessions we got was ours and no one else’s. Barry took this mindset to the logical extreme. He was fiercely protective of his ‘stuff’, which included an enormous tempura painting of Conan the Barbarian and a rocking chair that just happened to occupy the center of the den where the TV set was. Heaven forbid anyone who was caught sitting there when he came home. As a precursory warning, he would slap the back of the chair and grunt ‘Get up’. Not many people outside Kevin would challenge him beyond that point, but then, Kevin pretty much followed his own drummer and challenged everyone.
  
   When he got to college (Southern Arkansas in Magnolia and later, Central Arkansas), he easily got into a fraternity, earning the nickname ‘Nature Boy’ (because of his then-resemblance to legendary wrestler Ric Flair), earned a spot on the cheerleading team (paired with the head football coach’s daughter, no less) and garnered a bit of a reputation as an ‘eternal bachelor’.

   It was when he tried his hand at theatre that first grabbed my attention there was something to him besides brawn and an almost Fonzie-like appreciation for the fairer sex.

 

   SAU had come to Conway to participate in the regional college theatre festival. When Barry made his entrance in the Jonathan Bolt play ‘Threads’, I didn’t recognize him. He had all but enveloped his character, leaving nary a trace of the narcissistic frat brother I was expecting. Here was a guy who was having enormous fun with his part in the show and it carried over into the audience. Dang, that son-of-a-gun was good. I truly hadn’t seen that much emotion from him since he was in his single digits listening to Bobby Goldsboro’s ‘Honey’ for the 43rd time.

 

   There are lots more stories about him that will wait for another day, but as time passed, it seemed as though the ‘cute kid’ was slowly re-emerging from the ‘jock’. Maybe it was the onset of maturity. Maybe it was the rite of passage we all went through when we lost our father and oldest brother. In any case, by the time I was married, he was going steady with a very nice girl named Cathie Carr. They were married in 1990 and a few years later, the ‘Eternal Bachelor’ became the father of twin girls, Alex and Nikki.

 

   I wish I could say his idyllic lifestyle continued, but things happened that would have pushed any normal man to the curb. Cathie was diagnosed with breast cancer while she was carrying their third child, a little boy. It had been a while since I spent that much time in a church, but there was a lot of praying for the whole family until Mark Daniel was born and Cathie could go into treatment.

 

   At this point, the Kansas City branch of the Grant family are well. Cathie made it through and Barry even shaved his blonde hair in support. He has kept the hair off for reasons unknown, but occasionally will wear a wig for an entirely different reason. In Kansas City, where they live, they support the local Cancer Society by participating in a ‘Boys as Babes’ softball game. I watched my brother, the quintessential Stud Muffin and former Chippendale dancer (till Mom found his G-String in the laundry) don a big white curly wig and stuff himself into a sea blue dress to raise money for cancer survivors and their families.

 

   I gotta say…he looks cute.