Things About My Brother

It was my big brother's 50th birthday yesterday, so here are The Things You Ought To Know About My Brother:

• He's scary smart. I don't think there's a single thing he can't explain. Whether it's about finance or physics or filet mignon, he knows all about it.
• He's the best direction giver ever. Seriously, if you need to know how to get to a certain intersection in Ulaan Bator, I have no doubt he'd be able to give you detailed and accurate directions that would be invaluable.
• He's one of the funniest people I know. Few people on the planet can make me laugh so hard I feared for my health. You should hear him speak Russian with a Scottish accent.
• He drove a cab in Toronto for a year to finance a 3 month trip to Greece and Turkey. I'd be way too much of a wuss to have done either. He said he spoke to people in his cab like he never dreamt he'd ever speak to anyone in his life.
• He's a really, really good cook. Once he had the fire department come to his house when he was bar-b-queing some lamb because one of the neighbours was concerned about the smoke coming from the back yard. And when the firefighters found out it wasn't a fire, they asked for the recipe for the lamb.
• He introduced me to Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Warren Zevon and the Talking Heads. I'm eternally grateful.
• When I was in hairdressing school he bravely let me learn how to trim beards on him.
• He was smart enough to marry his wife, who is awesome, and owns her own chocolate company.
• He still ties his shoes the way he did when he was 5, that is, by making two rabbit ears with the laces and looping them together. I guess it's been working all these years, why change now?
• He once convinced me when I was a kid that the two tiny moles on my neck were vampire bites, and that instead of dying I would walk the earth forever seeking the blood of others.
• He also told me that traffic lights make a clicking sound when they change because it allowed blind people to drive. I think I was about 13 before I thought "hey....".

Happy Birthday, John!