THIS HOUSE SUCKS!!!

This is probably one of the greatest things that ever happened, and like other stories I’ve brought to derryX.com, the sequence of events is something that has always been up for debate.

You all know my brother, Dom, as The Fat Lantern. He recently started that pretty focused blog of the same name, and I try my best to link to him wherever I can, mainly because he’s my brother, but also because he’s awesome. And I would hope that the story I’m about to present makes you feel the same way.

What I’m about to tell is the story how I remember it. And just like previous times, I wasn’t there to experience this first hand; I just heard about it pretty much as soon as it happened.

So we used to hang out with our neighbors, Dan and Marc, a lot when we were kids. Most of the time was spent playing video games or watching wrestling in my parents’ basement, but there were lots of times where we used to hang out at their house. Actually, I spent much of my free time during the day working in my dad’s shop, but I’m pretty sure this particular instance happened before I started working.

On hot summer days, their parents used to give them what we all called “icepops.” What they were were the artificially flavored and colored Popsicle ices. They specifically bought the ones with two handles that you can break apart. I’m almost 100% positive they bought the generic store brand icepops too.

If Dom and I were hanging out there, they used to give us one that we had to break in half. I’m sure it got pretty expensive to give us each a whole one on the frequency that we were over there. It’s all just the same because we used to give them snacks if they were over. My mom tended to buy the less expensive Fla-Vor-Ice that was just sugar water in a bag that they sold at room temperature and you had to freeze yourself.

We used to bust out the ice cream at night when no one else was around. It wasn’t anything special usually. It was Smurf ice cream from Blueberry Mountain, sometimes.

And I guess Dom loved his ice cream.

One day, Dom was over there on a hot day, and their mom was handing out icepops just like any other day.  When they handed Dom an icepop, he asked if there was any ice cream. When they said, “no, Dom, just icepops,” Dom responded, “this house sucks!”

Over the years, the story morphed into Dom responding, “this house sucks; there’s no icepops,” but that just doesn’t make any sense.

The “this house sucks” thing was something we got a lot of fun out of for years to come. He was just a little kid being completely honest; I’m sure he was genuinely pissed too. Even back then (I’m sure he was like 8 or something), he was fat-minded.