Sensitive and caring

I called one of my brothers tonight, mainly because he called me yesterday when I wasn't home and I thought there might be something urgent. There wasn't. He just wanted to chat. He's the sensitive and caring brother. He calls every six months or so just to make sure I'm still alive.

SCB told me that Youngest Brother visited him recently with his family, and that he remembered something I said about YB not answering my emails. I had told him that YB was the worst person to be the only NZ member of the family to have email, because he hardly ever answered it or passed on news.

SCB said that he'd checked this out. He'd asked YB, "Have you heard from Badaunt recently?', and got the nonchalant reply, 'Oh, yeah, she emailed once or twice."

"So what did she have to say for herself?" SCB asked.

"Oh, nothing much. Just the usual," was the response.

This would have been the end of the conversation, except that SCB, knowing YB rather well, got suspicious. He asked,

"Have you read her email yet?"

YB, who is incapable of lying (at least with family, because he knows we'll always catch him out) (or perhaps because it never occurs to him), replied,

"Nah, not yet. I think K did, though." (K is his wife.)

SCB and I giggled over this. "Well, what do you expect? He hasn't changed at all," he told me.

"I noticed," I said, and we giggled some more. We shared a few insulting but funny anecdotes about YB. After a while SCB had a sudden attack of conscience and said, "Ah, but he's all right, really. We shouldn't laugh about him like this behind his back."

"Why not?" I asked. "Isn't that what he's for? I certainly haven't found any other use for him yet! Besides, it's nothing he doesn't know. I laugh about him to his face, too. And in email."

"Oh, so that's why he doesn't read it," said SCB, and we pondered the logic of this for a moment.

After I got off the phone I checked to see what my last 'nothing much, just the usual' email was about, and discovered it was one I'd written in the middle of one of those typhoons. It's getting pretty windy here, I'd said. The rest of the back fence just blew away.

It was the third one I'd sent him since July, none of which have been answered.

Perhaps I'll send him another one soon, telling him the house fell down, I lost my job, I'm homeless and hungry, and please send food. Then I'll sit back and wait for the food package to arrive sometime in the next year or so.

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Currently reading: Good Morning, Midnight, by Reginald Hill. Highly recommended.