<p>I figured some of you might enjoy this essay I wrote for my brother’s 21st birthday.</p>
<p>Feel free to discuss if you so desire!</p>
<p>(Some minor, idenitifying details removed).</p>
<p>"Speaking The Simpsons: Why Screw Flanders Means I Love You </p>
<p>If you were to steal my cell phone and go through my text messages, most of them would make sense. There are notes from my mother saying that she loves me, messages clarifying meeting times for a club, texts about sorority dinners, and so on and so forth. All of it is standard, normal, expected. If you were to look at the text messages passed between my brother and me, however, your head would spin at the utter lack of logic. You would see no connection between mega stores and peanuts bought with $20 bills, no link between Senior Spielbergo and bone dry ankles. You would dismiss these, never guessing that these seemingly random, senseless exchanges that say nothing to you mean the world to me. </p>
<p>Though Im certain there was one, I cannot remember a time before the Simpsons. When we were children, long before the days of homework, community service club meetings, oil changes, and girlfriends, it was our nightly ritual to plop down together on the couch and watch the hour of Simpsons reruns aired by the local Fox affiliate, something as regular and expected as dinner or brushing our teeth at bedtime. The hours we spent with Homer, Flanders, Bart, Ralph, and all the rest served as a glue that reaffirmed the bonds of shared blood. Indeed, we were raised in the Simpsons the way some kids are raised in sports, culture, or religion; as we like to say we were raised by TV, and [we] turned out<br>
TV. </p>
<p>I cannot recall precisely when the quoting started, when the words that went so frequently into our ears began to come out of our mouths, but I can remember the day when we gained full and shocking fluency in our second tongue, la lingua Simpsona. We were in car, driving between errands when bro offered me up a quote and I responded in kind. We traded quotes for the rest of day, a certain easy rhythm to our banter. We quoted until Mom screamed and left the roomand then we kept quoting. Ever since that day, we have spoken The Simpsons like natives, a constant flow of quotes that outlasted sadness and fights and even our love and loyalty to show that once told us that Iron helps us play. It was he who understood when my senior year quote was Trying is the first step toward failure, he who understood that Stephen Kings great novel was in reality not The Shining but rather The Shinning and that the goggles, in fact, did nothing. It was he who would watch the DVDs with me and laugh before all the jokes came. We shared the show always, no matter how much or how little else we shared. It was, is, and will probably always be the tie that binds us. And, like only the best of ropes, it got stronger the more we needed it.</p>
<p>It was in my freshman year of college when the texts started. With me in Montana and him elsewhere, my brother and I were separated more than we had ever been beforeby distance, by degrees Celsius, by time zones, by TV schedules, and by the million other things that separate a working 20 year-old man from an 18 year-old college girl. But one day, with a single text message, all of that stopped mattering. There is schedule in the volley of quotes we send; it could be five an hour or when a month. There exists, too, only the faintest trace of a pattern in our quotes; while sometimes there be a link in character, episode, or theme, most of the time the only connection is shared memories, the fact that both of us, for example, know that in America, first you get the sugar, then you get women, then you get the money. It is the fact that below the laughter runs a silent conversation only we can hear, one where But without the grease you can only taste the bug anus means I love you and Stupid babies need the most attention! stands in for I care about you. We rarely say anything more, anything real because we dont have to; those quotes, those memories say more than a million words or a thousand pictures ever could.</p>
<p>People these days blame TV for everything, from autism to obesity to poor socialization to bad grades. Get your children away from the monster, experts cry; save them from the machine that destroys them. Parents who raise their kids on nightly TV instead of Little League are ridiculed, insulted, and mocked, told they are wasting years, spending precious time on something that will give them nothing good in the end. While I dont dispute that children should frequently get out of the glow of the tube, I question those who so relentlessly rip TV as destroyer of families and a killer of communication. I wonder if they know about my brother and I, about the smiles we shared and memories we keep, about the show that tied us to each other despite everything else. But most of all, I wonder if they know the feeling of opening up a text message and smiling widely in spite of a bad day because you know that while a million people can say I love you and mean it in degrees of truth, someone who says I love you in Simpsons means it every time.</p>
<p>So as you turn 21, I tell you that from the top of the chairlift, you have an eagle eye view of the area directly below the chairlift. I know youll understand."</p>