Storymania - From Monster To Freshman by Sarah M Kaul

From Monster To Freshman
Sarah M Kaul

From Monster to Freshman
By: Sarah Kaul

“Kyle Monster!” I heard my mom call from the kitchen. “Kyle Monster,” she called again, “where are you?” She walked down the hallway to my brother’s room, but stopped short as she stared into the bathroom and was momentarily frozen in shock in the doorway. She had just witnessed my little brother diagonally snip off one third of his handsome, bleach blond bangs with his school scissors. “Kyle Thomas!” she bellowed. “What on Earth are you doing?” A mischievous sparkle gleamed from his eyes under his golden trimmed, round glasses, and a cunning smile spread across his face, making his protruding, curved ears perk up and creating dimples in his round rosy checks.
In an innocent voice he replied, “My bangs are too long, so I’m cutting them. How do they look?” My mom was furious, but when she saw how ridiculous he looked, it was hard for her to stay mad, and she just had to laugh.
Throughout his early childhood, Kyle always made my mom and the rest of the family laugh. He used to put on funny little plays with his silly animal figurines, two chairs, and a blanket. Upon hearing a family member tell a joke, he would start cracking jokes left and right. Most of the time his jokes didn’t make much sense, but they were funnier that way.
Once, when Kyle was about six, I dressed myself up in make up, and a pretty dress with fancy shoes. Then, I did the same to Kyle: dress, high heels, make up, and all. At first, Kyle was unsure about the whole ordeal, but as soon as he saw the reaction of my mom, he really got into it and started to sing and dance around my room like a girl. “Kyle,” my mom would always say, “You are such a character.” That was over seven years ago, and today, he’s still living up to her words.
Kyle is fourteen years old now, and a freshman in high school. With his fluffy, short cut, brownish-blond hair, protruding ears, dashing caramel eyes, dimpled smile, square jaw, and toned muscular body, Kyle looks nothing like me. I will be walking down the hallway in between classes with my friends and he’ll say, “Hi, Sarah!” in a giddy, loud voice as he walks by. My friends always ask who was that and when I tell them that it was my younger brother, they can’t believe it. Some of them even think he is really cute, although he is two or three years younger than they are. Even though it is somewhat disturbing to know that some of my friends think my brother is hot, I am used to it by now. Kyle has always been a charmer, and my friends have always liked him, whatever their reason might be.
Kyle is most charming because of his great sense of humor. Throughout grade school, Kyle never viewed himself as part of the “in” crowd. Therefore, from my point of view, Kyle developed his sense of humor as a means of making friends, and in an overall attempt to find himself and his place in life. Now, everyday life is just an act on stage for Kyle. He finds humor in almost every aspect of life. The part that I truly admire about him is that instead of being selfish and keeping the humor to himself, he shares it with those around him and brightens up their lives, even though he might not realize it at the time. For this very reason, I hope that one day he will see the joy that he has given others and finally find himself and his place in life.
Kyle loves to tell jokes.
“One day,” Kyle began as we waited for the bus on a crisp autumn morning, “a man heard a knock at his door. He opened the door and peered out, but there was no one there. Then he looked down and saw a snail. The man picked up the snail and chucked it as far as he could. Three years later, the man heard another knock at his door. Again, it was the snail. The man looked down and the snail said, ‘What was that all about?’” As I began to chuckle, his caramel eyes sparkled with joy, and a smile slipped across his broad featured face giving him dimples. The golden morning sun illuminated his face and caught the blond streaks in his hair, as his face glowed with pride, due to the success of his joke.
Another time he came up to me and said, “Hey Sarah, listen to this. A group of people from different states were in a car traveling down the highway. A man from Idaho throws a potato out of the window saying, ‘We have too many of these in our state.’ Next, a man from Kentucky throws fried chicken out of the window saying, ‘We have too many of these in our state.’ Then a man from New York throws the Kentucky man out of the window saying, ‘We have too many of these in our state!’”
I have to admit that at first I didn’t understand the joke, but after he explained the part about the “Kentucky fried chicken”, I finally got it. Kyle gets his jokes from movies he has seen, and comedy TV shows. He especially enjoys watching Saturday Night Live. His favorite expression comes from that show. The expression is “I got your nose” from a scene where a kid pulls off Michael Jackson’s rubber nose. Kyle is very good at imitating and acting out the different line parts from the movies and shows.
My brother is good at being comical even when he’s not trying to be. The way I see it, he has been trying to be funny for so long, that it has become second nature for him.
A few weeks ago, my mother looked at me and instructed, “Go down the hall and tell your brother to turn that noise down.” She was referring to the rock music that he was blaring from his room. I walked to Kyle’s room and poked my head through the door, in order to tell him to turn the radio down. Before I could tell him, I was stopped by the fact that he was singing and dancing to the song, while admiring his actions and himself in the mirror. I have heard of girls doing things like that but not boys, so I couldn’t help myself as I busted out laughing. This caught his attention and he stopped abruptly, as I watched bright apple red color arise in his checks.
“What are you doing here? Get away!” screamed Kyle over the music trying to hide the fact that he was embarrassed.
“Mom wants you to turn your music down!” I yelled back at him, hoping he could hear me over the rock music that was coming from the radio on his headboard.
Kyle likes to sing, but would deny it to anyone who would ask. Last Saturday night, we were at the races, and out of the blue he starts singing. Unaware that I’m watching him, he really gets into the song he is singing and starts to add in facial expressions, and I watch his semi-bushy eyebrows bob up and down. It makes me contemplate the idea of whether or not he is a five-year-old at heart.
I can remember two times when Kyle really made me laugh. The first situation happened while we were out swimming in the pool. He was showing off by attempting “cool” ways to jump off the diving board.
As he was preparing to perform his “cool move”, he called out to me, “Hey Sarah, watch this!” Suddenly he accidentally slipped, fell face first onto the diving board, which in turn caused the diving board to spring up, briefly flipping Kyle up into the air before his body flopped into the water with a big splash. I know that it was insensitive, but the whole thing looked like it came directly from a cartoon scene of Goofy slipping and flopping off of a diving board, so I just had to laugh, but I went over to him right away to make sure he was OK. He survived to live another day with only a big red scratch on his toned stomach and minor scratches on his chin and face, which he received as he fell off the diving board, equipped with a rough sand texture, which is supposed to prevent you from slipping. The second situation was when I repeatedly asked Kyle to put his sweatshirt in his room and he continued to ignore me. I asked him to take care of it for a fifth time, but he just walked right past me and headed down the unlit stairs to the darkened room below. I was so mad, that I took his sweatshirt and threw it down the steps at him. Somehow the sleeves of the sweatshirt managed to wrap around his neck. His caramel eyes pierced wide open with fear, and his mouth jarred open, fully expanded, as he let out a high pitched, shrilled scream, and in surprise, accidentally slipped down two steps.
Aside from his good sense of humor, Kyle is the typical American brother. He is athletic and an average boy. Kyle’s main hobby in life, besides girls, is sports. Kyle is hardly ever serious, but when he is, he means business, and that is the way it is with him and sports. He also gets very worked up over sports, especially when he loses, then all he says is “freakin” this and “freakin’” that. It seems as if “freakin’” is the only word in his vocabulary during this time. Throughout the years, he has been involved in baseball, basketball, soccer, and football, and has played them all year round. There have been quite a few occasions where two or even three of the sports have overlapped, but he has always stuck with it. Doing well in sports is very important to him. He strives very hard to bring out the best in himself. Because of this, he has a very athletically built, toned and sculpted body, which includes his very strong muscular arms and legs. Kyle is very talented at the sports he plays.
He also strives for the approval of my mom and dad, and especially wants them to be proud of him. One particular memory that will always stay with me is the time that he scored seven goals in one soccer game. Everyone was so proud of him, and I could tell that it truly made him happy inside, because of the ear to ear, pearly smile he had on his face.
Kyle not only enjoys playing sports, but he also likes to watch them being played. He goes to local baseball games and watches our cousins play, or other teams that are labeled as the “good team to beat” for the year. His favorite football team is the Denver Broncos, and if it were up to him, he would never miss a second of any game they play. His room is filled with Bronco stuff. He has a Bronco collectable miniature semi truck, a tape of the Broncos wining the Super Bowl, miniature Bronco helmets, miniature Bronco figurines, Bronco footballs, Bronco pens, a Bronco necklace, and a special edition of the Broncos in Sports Illustrated, on his dresser. On his walls, he has a Bronco calendar, a Bronco decorative light in the shape of a helmet, a framed plaque of John Elway’s card, a picture of Terrell Davis, and a Bronco light switch. He also has a Broncos lamp, a Broncos pillow, Broncos caps, and Bronco clothing.
Kyle is also the average brother. He has a collection of Sports Illustrated and Nintendo magazines in his room under his bed. He dreams of one day owning a Stingray Corvette, which is a car he’ll never get, but that doesn’t stop him. He teases our younger sister Marissa, and bugs me all the time. For instance, Kyle will take away her dolls or toy animals and run off with them or hide them, so she has to search forever for them.
When she finds them, he says, “Marissa, look! Dolly can fly!” and tosses her doll across the room. Whenever we are out some place and Kyle gets bored with nothing to do, he will start to irritate me, by poking me in the sides and in the face, and sometimes he will even pull my hair.
“You got something there, and there, and there,” he taunts, as he pokes his bony fingers into my sides.
Kyle is also a typical boy. He spits all the time, and he farts and then laughs as everyone close by starts to gag. He can be very stubborn sometimes and refuses to put things away, so his room consists of dirty clothes and other anonymous things sprawled across the floor or heaved into piles in the corners. Kyle will spend way too much time talking on the computer over the internet, and then, on top of it all, he will leave the computer on. He also spends a fair amount of time checking himself out in the mirror, but then again, at least he’s concerned about his well being.
One cold morning, while we waited for the bus, Kyle let out a raunchy fart.
“Ewe! Gross!” I exclaimed as I backed up wind from him.
“My skin has goose bumps,” he informed me as he was checking out his muscular arms.
“That’s not goose bumps,” I shot back at him, “that’s just your skin shriveling up, and wishing it wasn’t your skin, because of the stench!”
“My skin is honored to be on my hot, sexy body,” replied Kyle with a smirk.
Kyle is a typical boy, and every now and then, he has a boyish moment, and gets the urge to demolish something. For instance, he likes to take his baseball bat when it gets dark out and hit fireflies. He watches as they slowly die and their glowing lights go out.
“Ha! Ha!” Kyle chuckles as he lets out his evil laugh. It must be a boy thing.
No matter how cruel that seems, or how much he denies it, Kyle also has a softer side. Underneath all his layers, he is a really kind and caring person. When I got home from getting my wisdom teeth surgically removed, I was still groggy from being put under.
The first thing Kyle said to me was, “Cool, my sister’s wasted!” and then he laughed at my huge, swollen, chipmunk checks, but later helped me out by getting me certain things that I needed without even complaining once.
Another time, we were up in the haymow, in our grandparents’ barn on their farm, and somehow I fell off the bales to the barn floor and was knocked unconscious. My grandmother said that she had never seen Kyle run so fast in his life.
“Grandma! Grandma!” Kyle screamed bursting through the milk house doors, while trying to hold back tears as he gasped for air.
She said that she thought an enormous swarm of hornets were after him, but instead he told her about me and started crying because he thought that I was dead. He even tries to cheer me up by making me laugh when I’m having a bad day. My birthday was a few weeks back, and for a birthday present, he burnt me three CDs, which included all the songs I wanted to get. Kyle also goes out to our grandparents’ farm and helps them out by doing certain tasks, such as tilling the garden for our grandmother.
Our grandma also comes to all of his soccer games and before she leaves, Kyle always says, “Bye Grandma! Thanks for coming!” and gives her a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Deep down, no matter how much teasing he does to cover it up, I think that Kyle has a soft spot for our younger sister Marissa. One time, he went to the Mineshaft with a bunch of his friends in order to have fun, play games, and win prizes, and he came home with a few little gifts for her. Another time, we went to the State Fair as a family (my mom, my dad, my sister, Kyle and I), and Kyle bought Marissa this fluffy, white Beanie Baby dog named Cupid out of his own money, and today, she still carries the dog around with her wherever she goes. After he gave her the dog, a proud soft smile crept over his face along with a look of satisfaction, as he watched Marissa’s face bubble with joy and excitement. A few times he even let her play with his toy cars and animals, so I know that there is a soft side buried somewhere inside him.
Another part of his soft side is his fear of death. He told me once that his biggest fear was dying before the age of twenty-five. I think that this is mainly because of the fact that he had experienced a great amount of death at a young age due to deaths in the family, including our pets. When Kyle was rather young, our dog Rusty died of old age. I can still remember waking up the morning that Rusty died. My mom and dad told Kyle and I to go into the kitchen. When we went into the kitchen, my mom told us that Rusty had died over night. I still remember watching as Kyle’s lower lip started to quiver, as a wave of tears filled his beautiful caramel colored eyes and came pouring out over his chubby, little checks. His usually round perky ears, seemed to have drooped somewhat. My mom sat in the kitchen hugging us for a while as we cried, and that was Kyle’s first encounter with death. Then a few years ago, our uncle died of a heart attack and we all went to his funeral. I think that the loss of our uncle hit Kyle even harder than me, because he kept all his thoughts and feelings inside, as he cried outside. A year or so later, our dog Patches also died, and my mom told my little sister that Patches went to live with our uncle up in heaven. At the time, Kyle barely cried about it, but it took all of his strength to hold back the tears, and I know he cried about it later.
Kyle’s childhood, as it does to everyone, has made him the person he is today, although he doesn’t think so. Kyle is a talented, athletic, humorous fourteen-year-old, all thanks to his childhood experiences. Extended family members still call Kyle “Kyle Monster” from time to time when he gets in trouble or they reminisce about stunts Kyle pulled in the past. He is still doing things that require my mom to call him “Kyle Monster,” too, and sometimes he even does things that make mom call him by his whole name. Despite the fact that he annoys the heck out of me, and continuously tries to make me angry, I love him dearly and would never give him up! I think all of the characteristics that Kyle has developed in his short fourteen years will enable him to be a successful and productive adult.