i made the mistake of caring. ever since, years ago, my brother went and stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong between my mother and i, i’ve not really had that much to say to him. but then something happened and i went and had the slightest inkling of consciousness and well, i told him how i felt about something.
mom recently left texas to go back to mis-ery. like so many of us, she’s in a somewhat limbo stage… she sold her house down here and intends to buy one up there, but this of course requires finding one first. so in the interim, she’s renting an apartment. and not just any apartment, but one from my cheap-a$$ slumlord brother. i call him that not to be mean, but because i have stayed completely out of his business for all the years that he’s been gathering up run-down, tired, abused old houses and apartments and woefully fixing them up to rent them out, only to be painfully disappointed when he attracts subprime renters who in turn tear up and destroy what little goodness remains in his run-down, tired and abused old houses and apartments. and by staying out of his business, i’ve not shared with him the opinion that if he just slowed down his strategy of buying seemingly every vacant rental property within a stone’s throw he could maybe actually invest the one’s he has, he could probably attract a better grade of renter.
but i digress. i’ve stayed out of his business, and he, therefore, has stayed out of mine. until now. until i decided that it really did bother me just a little bit that he was charging mom rent to live there until she could find a house. so i said as much. which apparently, when you’re a cheap-a$$ slum lord, you don’t like to be told that it’s just not right to charge your own mother rent. you find this offensive, actually. so he snapped back with how little i truly cared for mom anyway and what right did i have to tell him how to run his business that i know nothing about and he never tells me what to do and he doesn’t drive some brand new suv and he doesn’t go on vacations to places where you can’t visit any relatives…
to which my reply was that it was just wrong to charge your mom rent and how much i cared for mom was truly not his concern and my brand new suv wasn’t the cadillac or bmw he seems to think it is, but yes, it is my first new car in over nine years unlike his collection of no less than half a dozen used cars and two motorcyles and yes i did finally plan a vacation to nowhere for the first time in a decade because every other vacay that i’ve had in that time has been to visit friends and relatives and by the way, its still wrong to charge your mom rent.
to which his reply was that i was right about everything else i had to say except the one thing which was apparently still none of my business, that being the thing about charging mom rent.
to which my reply was… well, #&%@ it. apparently we just weren’t meant to get along, either.
and on that note