Anything you can do, I can do better (ouch!)
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
In retrospect, it was a mean trick to pull. But in my defense, Cousin Ollie had it coming.
Ollie was one of those little twerps who, no matter what you did, claimed that he did it first, better or both.
When I was laid up with the measles, Ollie sent me a get-well card signed, “Your a big wimp.”
When I told him later that the word was “you’re” as in “you are a big wimp,” Ollie waved it off. “I learned how to spell before you did. I was just testing you.”
“Why would you give me homework when I already felt so miserable?”
“To prove that you were being a big baby.” Ollie puffed out his chest, which isn’t easy from a skinny twerp to do. “If you had been as miserable as I was when I had the measles, you would’ve been too sick to notice a crummy misspelling.”
“You never had the measles.”
“Of course I did, Burtie. I just didn’t make a big deal out of it like some wimpety-wimps I could name. They almost had to cut off both of my arms and one of my legs because my measles were so bad. But I never cried.”
I shook my head. “They don’t amputate people for the measles.”
“Well, my measles were the really rare, super bad kind, not regular measles like big babies get. The doctors said it was how tough I am that saved me.”
Three weeks later, my annoying cousin must have had an unusual relapse because Aunt Tillie said he was stuck inside with the measles.
“And how that boy can fuss,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You would think that no one ever had measles before.”
“Not like his,” I said.
That was Ollie. I once scored an A+ on a spelling test.
“Big deal,” Ollie said. “I’ve only missed one word the whole year.”
“Let me guess, the word was ‘you’re,’” I said.
Weird, because anytime Ollie slipped me a note, I barely could decipher it. His spelling was so rotten, it was like his notes were written in code.
“They are,” Ollie said. “The FBI asked me to create a new spy code for them because mine is so good.”
“The FBI aren’t spies.”
Ollie winked. “Not that they would let someone like you know. It’s a special branch.”
I don’t know what possessed me to do it. Maybe it was the time I told Ollie that I had run a full mile that morning, and he said he dashed off 12.
Maybe it was because he said he scored the record high on our favorite video game, but couldn’t show me because he accidentally reset it.
Maybe it was because he said he had ridden more hogs piggyback than I ever had. (That one was true. I thought riding pigs instead of ponies was stupid. But still…)
I kicked a pebble in the gravel driveway. “Did I tell you that this morning, I jumped off our barn roof?” (Notice, I never said that I did it; I asked Ollie if I had told him that. So, not lying!)
“Nuh-uh.” But Ollie looked intrigued.
“Did I ever tell you that if you jump holding a bed sheet — like the Batman sheet off my bed — it’ll act like a parachute, and you’ll float gently to the ground?”
“Sure, I knew that,” Ollie said. “But I didn’t use a bed sheet. I jumped holding a pillowcase. Only someone as skilled as I am can parachute off a barn roof with a pillowcase and not get hurt.”
“No way,” I said. “Show me.”
Later, Cousin Ollie would tell me that his doctors said that they’d never seen a boy so tough that his broken leg healed in only six weeks.
“It was really four weeks, but they couldn’t believe that my healing powers were so awesome,” Ollie said, “so they left the cast on two more weeks.”
The pillowcase had to be thrown away.
For some unreasonable reason, the grownups grounded me. Why? Jealousy? Because nobody serves justice to a braggart cousin as well as I do. No one.
Send your boasts to Burt at news@falmouthoutlook.com.
