Honesty

I admire Evan's honesty. While others ignore the elephant in the room or avoid dealing with a visible and obvious problem, he confronts it. The issue is addressed, solved, and life goes on. Sometime this is done more abruptly than optimal, but it can also be quite funny.

When I had my masters thesis defense I invited a couple of friends, male and female. But only the guys came. Nobody mentioned anything until Evan entered the room and loudly asked, "Hey Brigham! Where are the girls?!?"

Cavities. Again.

Evan rarely gets cavities (see earlier candy swallowing post), but he had two the other day. The dentist said Evan needs to do a better job of brushing.

Since I hadn't seen his tube of toothpaste get smaller in weeks, I thought to intervene. In trying to be a better older-brother-with-slight-parental-responsibilities-but-no-authority, I tried to use questions to encourage behavior without dictating the solution:

Me: "How long should you brush your teeth?"
Evan: "3 hours."
Me: "How about 2 minutes?"
Evan: "3 hours!"
Me: "30 seconds?"
Evan: "ok, 4 hours."
Me: "How about 20 seconds. 1. 2. 3.4...20" <<done while pantomiming brushing>>

Communication

Sometimes I feel like Evan and I are this old married couple. Especially when we get mail addressed to "Brigham & Evan Wilson".

This also happens when Evan uses married communication methods to tell me what to do. We were at a Celtics game and Evan was hungry. He had already told me earlier in the day how he was excited to eat dinner at the basketball game because they would have "great food". I hate paying for overpriced not-tasty food, so I told him to bring his wallet.

6 minutes after sitting down, Evan turned to me and asked:

Evan: Are you hungry? Did you have dinner?
Me: Can we wait until the second quarter?
Evan: I want a sandwich.

Now the same dialogue with translation:

Evan: Get me food! Please.
Me: I don't want to. I hate basketball. I hate this experience except for the joy on your face.
Evan: Get me a sandwich! Please.

So I put down my book and got a slice of pizza, two drinks, and two hot dogs for $34 dollars.

Cell Phone Contacts

Evan is very efficient with his cell phone. He optimizes which short film clips, pictures, and address book entries are the optimal mix. Unfortunately, he must think that a contact takes up 1MB, because he purges that list more than I purge my Facebook friends.

Tyler is one of my favorite people and Evan considers him a good friend. We were roommates for nearly a year until the house we were renting got sold. Sadly, we had to split up: Evan and I stayed in the neighborhood, but Tyler moved to Bethesda, MD to be closer to work.

Less than a month after Tyler moved away, we met up for dinner and went to P.F. Chang's. As we were walking to the restaurant, Evan made an announcement

Evan: I deleted you from my phone.
Tyler: You deleted me?!? Why?
Evan: Because you move away!You on red line!

A 30 minute drive, a 45 minute ride on the Metro Red Line, Tyler was dead to Evan.

When we moved to Boston, Evan deleted me from his phone. Why? "Because you moved from DC." With him.

Pregaming

The other day we were invited over for dinner at our cousins'. I came down to the kitchen to get ready to leave and I found Evan in the kitchen getting his own dinner ready. He had not forgotten about our appointment. He was simply hungry.

Me: Evan! We're going to dinner soon! Why are you eating?
Evan: Dinner is at 6:30.

It was 6pm.

It's Natural

Evan is very comfortable with his body. Okay. Probably a little too comfortable. He isn't an exhibitionist, he is simply efficient when going to and from the shower. Blame wrestling or football in high school, but my brother just doesn't care or see anything wrong with walking around in the suit his mother gave him.

When we moved to Boston, we stayed at our cousin's house. From our cousin-once-removed's bedroom that we were using, we had to walk five feet in a hallway off the kitchen to get to the bathroom.

I was in the kitchen. Evan walked to the bathroom. He was not well covered.

Me: "Evan! You can't walk around naked here with the little kids!"
Evan: "It wasn't me!"

Evan in Winter

Evan is hard core. When a foot of snow fell only a few days after 2 feet of snow, he trudged off along un-shoveled sidewalks, caught a bus, caught the T, and showed up for work. There were about 4/57 people there due to the weather. He worked his full time, studied in the library, trudged uphill home, and then started shoveling the driveway.

Despite his strength, Evan seems to be tired of winter. He lasted pretty long, considering I have been tired of winter since that first cloudy cold day November.

Evan: Is March Spring in Boston?
Me: No. Spring here is in like April or even May.
Evan: What temperature is it in March?
Me: 20's and 30's.
Evan: What temperature is it in April?
Me: 30's and 40's.
Evan: What temperature is it in May?
Me: 40's and 50's.
Evan: oh :(

He wasn't satisfied with my answers. Sadly, neither was I.

Candy = Cavities

Evan has never really liked candy. Growing up, he was the best person to go trick-or-treating with because he would share everything except the peanut butter cups.

Showing that all of those dentist visits paid off, Evan strongly believes that eating candy gives cavities. Well. He believes that CHEWING candy gives cavities. So he swallows candy whole.

This is a clever strategy with small candy, but not with large candy. Normally, Evan would refuse any sized candy on principle; however, when everyone else is eating a shared snack, it is hard to refuse.

In a religion class at BYU, the professor passed around a bag of Peanut M&M’s. Evan grabbed a few, tossed them in his mouth and started choking. He teared up, slapped his chest, and said, "I'm ok!"

But Evan hadn't finished his handful. And every other student was still eating them. So he started to put more in his mouth.

To prevent premature death, I grabbed the rest away and put them in my mouth. Evan glared at me, waited until I thought I had won, then stood up, walked to the front of the class, grabbed a handful, turned to make sure we had eye contact, and put them in his mouth. He quickly swallowed. Victory over the oppressor of freedom!