Timber! Fire! Scott!

There are tales worth telling.  Tales that still bring a smile to my face. 

Sure there was the frustrating stuff.  Scott rearranging all the dishes right after they were put away.  Obsessively mailing everything he could find.  Asking permission fifteen times in a row if he can eat a sandwich. 

I mentioned before about Scott biting and pinching and the bruises we all had.  Before I share the funny, I need to mention the turn around in Scott's behavior.  When I was in sixth grade, a man came to live in our house for a solid week.  My mom could share the details on what department he was from and how it came about but my memories are just of him living in our house.  His job was simply to give us ways to deal with Scott. 

We learned how to physically put Scott to the ground, in a way that wouldn't hurt hurt him when he was raging, so he couldn't hurt other people.  We rewarded Scott with bacon bits, the one non sugar item that he liked, for good choices. 

I don't remember all the details but I do know this single week changed our home.  My parents were facing this awful decision of putting my brother in an institution, a decision no parent should ever have to make.  That week turned it around for our family.  Scott stayed in our home, right where he belonged.

Learning to live with Scott doesn't mean that life was suddenly easier.  You know Scott's OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), well Scott can obsess and be compulsive like no one's business.  He would constantly arrange, everything.  So it was just as he pictured it should be.  He drove us crazy.

Anyone commenting to my parents, that our house must be spotless were greeted with giggles and guffaws.  My mother called it "order in chaos."  See, if Scott saw a pair of socks on the floor, he didn't pick them up.  He stretched them out parallel and wrinkle free, still on the floor.  Scott's sense of order was unique. 

So what did my non-verbal, OCD brother obsess about the most?  He loved chainsaws and fire.  How scary is that???   So as a tween, when he disappeared, the first thing we would do is run outside and stop and listen.  If we heard the distant purr of a chainsaw, that was the direction we headed.  Sometimes before we found him, a neighbor kid would run and tell us that he saw Scott in a police car and we knew he'd come home soon.

It helped being good friends the officer that lived next door.

What do you do with chainsaws?  Why chop down trees of course!  What would you use if you didn't have a chainsaw?  Logically any saw from the basement, which Scott was sneaking out to cut down a sapling, a very tall sapling on the edge of our property.  My dad figured it out and locked up all the saws.  Scott was maybe a quarter of the way through, it should have been all right.

Did I mention my brother is resourceful? 

One day I was in the kitchen, and I heard the familiar swoosh of a tree falling.  A tree falling very close to the house.  I knew that swoosh because we had spent the last two summers cutting trees down for wood to burn up at my grandparent's farm.  I ran out the back door and there stood my brother with a steak knife, I kid you not, a freakin steak knife and the downed sapling on our neighbors porch. 

My brother had been sneaking out of the house every single day, every chance he could to work at that tree.  It took him all summer.  But he did it!  He was lucky he wasn't hurt.  He was lucky dad saw the humor and the neighbors were understanding.  I've been told it isn't possible, to cut a tree with a steak knife but it is.  I saw the aftermath.

Which leads to the next obsession. 

Scott loved fires and we burned wood to heat our home.  Summer was hot and humid in Vermont.  Miserable by anyone's standards so when my mom told Scott, after he asked for the fifteenth time if she'd start a fire, she rather meant it.  It was July!  In the nineties, in the humidity. 

So Scott took matters in his own hands.

My brother Malcolm has a speech impediment.  When he was six and seven, he still could not be understood.  The words "Slow down Malcolm, speak slower" were pretty common in our home.  There we were, watching tv and Malcolm had walked up the stairs and was standing on the landing.  There was pointing and yelling, not a single one of us could understand him.  We all said "SLOW DOWN."  He continued to yell and point and act very unreasonable.

Show off that I was, I sauntered upstairs while telling my parents, that "I" would figure out what was going on.  Up the stairs I went only to be greeted by the sight of flames, licking the outside of my parents bedroom door.

I screamed "The HOUSE IS ON FIRE!"  Malcolm glared at me like I was the biggest idiot on the planet, that "No DUH" glare that only a sibling can give.  My mom yelled for us to get out of the house and ran into the kitchen to call the fire department.  My dad ran upstairs, only to find Scott standing in the hall cheerfully watching his handy work.  Scott was very upset when my dad shoved him down the stairs and had me drag him out of the house.

It was his fire and no one was letting him watch!  Scott was mad.

Bennington had a volunteer fire department with half a dozen little fire houses across the area.  Once a month there was a big meeting with all the volunteers and as luck would have it, that day all the firemen in town were meeting at the fire house across the street.  The parking lot was packed and a couple of firemen were walking to the building.

We hollered and yelled at them  "THERE'S A FIRE IN OUR PARENTS BEDROOM!" repeatedly, as they briefly stared at us dumbfounded.  It was just to absurd.  Then they sprang into life and thirty volunteers tore across the street, the fire truck pulled out to park in front of our house and all these men streamed into the house.  Smoke was pouring out the second story window.

In the meantime, my mother was still on the phone, she was still giving our address  when the firemen ran in.  My dad had already, mostly put the fire out but oh my did he have a tale to tell.  First lesson he learned, you should never stomp out a fire started in a plastic garbage can.  Did you realize the burning plastic will stick to your shoe and then your foot will be on fire?

The second lesson was that having a fire extinguisher near by can save not only your shoes but your foot too.

His description of his burning foot is the sort of story telling that lives on in family legends.  It was hysterical.

I took two hours to confirm that the fire wasn't in our walls or floors, so after the initial excitement, the wait was kinda boring.  But the volunteers did leave some really cool holes in my parents bedroom wall that went well with the burnt wall paper.

I think that gave my mom the courage to tackle re papering the walls herself a few years later.  That in turn, led to Scott stripping wallpaper in little bits and pieces all over the entire house.

Oh yes, there was lots of laughter with Scott, but mostly after the fact.  And luck, there definitely was luck growing up in Scott.

That house still stands today.

That had to be luck.    *smile*