Inspired by that thread about Matt the chaotic movie theater worker, I'm going to tweet some gems about my brother R. who also had chaotic energy.

In high school or maybe college, R. and his best friend worked at a store that sold hunting and camping gear. They worked behind the gun counter. To amuse themselves, they put the shocking dog collars around their own necks and shocked each other.

R. and his friends rode their horses through the drive-through fast-food window.

We lived out in the country and had what you might call a "free range" childhood experience. One time R. and his friends decided to take a small gas canister, the kind you use for a camping gas grill. They took it out into the back field and shot it with a rifle.

It made a BIG boom.

R. passed away in February which is why I'm using the past tense. At the visitation there were SO many stories like this, and I imagine there are lots that I never heard.

R. got a parachute from the military surplus store. (He loved that store). His idea was to hook the parachute to the back of his pickup, get someone to drive really fast, and parasail on the dirt roads.

One time at a family Easter gathering in South Dakota, it was very windy. The guys hooked up the parachute contraption and many people went parasailing over a dirt field.

If I had a book sitting out, he'd pick it up and move the bookmark to a different page. Chaos

The high school talent show was drummed up into kind of a big deal. The mayor was one of the judges. Most people sang or played in their bands. R. concocted a Trained Chicken Act.

1. Hypnotize a chicken. This is a real thing you can do, make the chicken doze out.
2. "Singing chicken" this involved R. making Bok Bok noises over a Garth Brooks song and acting like the chicken was singing.

3. Chicken trapeze. This involved 2 steps. Step one was dropping a fake chicken off the cat walk and pretending it died. Administering comical CPR and "reviving" it. Step 2 involved dropping a real live chicken off the cat walk and into the audience.

In order to hang posters up in the High school hallways, you have to have your poster stamped by the office. R. forged the stamp. He made posters that said things like:
"Have you seen my elephant?" A new play

He loved jokes and some of the jokes he told were very gross, like, I wish I could forget them. He was the only one in the immediate family who could properly tell a joke, though, and also the only musical person.

"Any idiot can play a banjo," he once said.

This one is just in my imagination. You know those "I voted" stickers? I think he's make a sticker in the same font, shape, and color, but it would say "I tooted."

He and I did not get along great, mostly because he had this way of poking at people's sore spots to get a reaction out of them. And I have a lot of sore spots. Also he was low-key homophobic. People are complicated.