I'm going to buy a copy of it for my brother.
I don't know if he never learned some of them, or if he's forgotten them, or what, but it's clear that he no longer understands some of the basic little courtesies--that, or else he thinks he can disregard them because he's a doctor and his time is valuable.
He's stored his snowmobile here at the bunker for many years. That's not a big issue--or, rather, it wasn't, until the Village of Crete Code Enforcement guy Noticed it. It was sitting on a trailer with a long-expired license plate, and the trailer was sitting on the lawn--two big no-no's, apparently, although the boats sat in that same back yard for literal decades without causing a ruckus (until recently).
So he's been trying to do something about it all. Fine. He came out Thursday to try to do something about it, and couldn't finish; he came out again today to try to get the job done.
Now, until my Escort gets sold, I park it behind the van in the driveway so I don't have to park the Cherokee on the hill. The north side of the driveway is therefore a parking lot: 1985 Fiero, Dad's van, my Escort.
So I got home from work this morning, and had to run errands even though what I most wanted to do was sleep. Once the errands were done, I hit the hay like a laser-guided warhead.
Maybe an hour later my brother wakes me up, wanting the keyes to my Escort so he can move it. Of course, the keys to the Escort were hanging on the same key rack the can keys are hanging on. They're in disguise, though: they're on a key fob which says Escort on them.
But, okay, I don't generally hang my keys there, so I can see that much. Fine. I went back to sleep pretty quickly.
When I woke up, I took a look outside and--well, what a surprise!--the Escort is now parked behind the Cherokee.
One of those "simple rules" is pretty basic:
If you move something, put it back.
Grumbling about it, I went out to move the car back to where it goes...and noticed that he hadn't bothered to lock the door, either. And when I got into the car to do what he should have done, I found that the parking brake was almost jammed, because he had yanked the handle as if he were trying to rip it out.
Now, I understand that it's a $400 car. It's not a fancy Acura TL and it sure as shootin' ain't a Corvette--but it was locked when he found it, and it should have been locked when he left it.
Of course, it should have been put back where he found it, too.
It wouldn't be such a problem if the car hadn't already been pilfered once. But you can't leave cars open in this neighborhood, and it's been like that for quite some time--my Mom had a portable cassette player stolen from her car in the 1990s, and the more recent theft of the change from the Escort's ashtray reinforced that lesson. I don't want to go to sell the car and then discover that some asshat has stolen the stereo faceplate, damn it.
It also wouldn't be so annoying if this had been the first time my brother had shown this kind of discourtesy. But a few months ago he came out here, spent some time hacking deadwood out of the bushes...and then he just left the branches laying in the back yard. He didn't drag them out to the street or anything like that; he just left them. And it was a big pile, too. And guess who had to drag all that stuff to the street? My Mom couldn't do it.
I realize that I'm not a high-powered doctor, and I realize that my brother makes, in an hour, what I make in a week--but my time is valuable to me and I strongly resent him leaving messes for me to clean up. I am not his OR nurse and I am not his flunky, and it's not up to him to decide what my tasks are around here. My Mom and I have a workable accommodation regarding that, and the last thing I want to do after I've spent all night moving freight around is to go drag someone else's pruning around.
I understand the frustration of making a trip somewhere to accomplish something, only to be thwarted by this or that unforeseen circumstance--but it doesn't excuse this kind of crap.
He'd be infuriated if one of his kids did something like that.