Bryan & I

I thought I was too old to have any other children, and then one night Bryan appeared to me. With my eyes closed, I sensed a tall spirit with light brown hair standing beside me who told me that he was coming to earth to be our son. He seemed very excited and I knew he belonged to us. I was thrilled to have such a special spirit join our family, and knew he would add a lot to our lives. However, I was surprised that he was announcing his arrival. I didn’t realize that he was warning me!

Bryan has always been a tease. He loves to joke about everything, and his wit is priceless. He is especially talented in Improv—Improvisation, which requires creative thinking, clarity in communication, confidence, and humor. He has always used that wit with razor-sharp effect.

Even as a child, Bryan knew how to find my weaknesses and pull my leg. I remember how we’d be sitting in church and he’d walk his fingers up my arm; I’d cringe and whisper to him to stop before I went out of my mind. He’d look at me with pity and do it again. One Sunday after church I told him how sensitive my skin on my arms were and how that action of just tinkling the skin really made my skin crawl. I explained how when I was a child my younger sister had sat beside me in church and done exactly the same thing as he did—just walk her fingers up and done my skin, and I’d about go crazy. I’d start to squirm and wiggle until my parents would get after me. I’d try to tell them it was my sister’s fault for annoying me, but she’d sit there with an innocent smile on her face, glowing like an angel, and I’d end up sent to my room without dinner after church for misbehaving. BIG MISTAKE TO TELL BRYAN. Now he always tries to make my skin crawl by running his fingers up my arms!

Bryan always likes to tease me. Usually when I say something to him, he pretends he has mis-heard me; I say, “Are you on your way to school?” and he’ll say, “No, I’m not a fool.” And it goes on and on until I don’t know what I’ve said. Then he’ll laugh, wink at me and disappear before I can hit him.

Another problem is that I have OCB Obsession Compulsive Behavior—especially about always doing everything early, and to the best of my ability. Whether it is a simple school assignment or a favor for a friend—as soon as I’m asked to do something, I do it. Ask me to notify all the neighbors of an Emergency Preparedness Drill, and I type up a reminder, list all the information, decorate it with graphics, and even put some audio file on it that plays music. Then I’ll deliver it to everyone in the neighborhood by that afternoon with cookies.

Bryan has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. This means he can’t complete an assignment if his life depended on it; if I sat on him until he did finish it, he would never turn it in—EVER! This means we had 12 years of cooperative frustration! I drove him senseless; he drove me insane. Everything I did to help him irritated him, and everything he did exasperated me. It is a miracle he survived high school and I lived through it. Maybe it was despite each other.    

But now, even while Bryan is attending college, he continues to exasperate me. He is very intelligent, but he does things in his own unique way. For the past three years Bryan has been performing at the Desert Star Theater, which does parody musical theater, and been performing with several improv troupes, as well as attending school full time. Last Christmas he went to Chicago to attend an Improv workshop at Second City, the quintessential improv comedy enterprise. Afterwards, he was tempted to quit college and move out to Chicago and try to make it big in theater there, EXCEPT for the fact that as Ed’s dependent he has a grant that pays for his college tuition. He told me he was sorry that he had that grant as it MADE him HAVE to go to college and get his education. If he didn’t have the grant, he could quit school, go to Chicago and make it big in the theater! I just shook my head! Poor Bryan, what a shame that he HAD to get his education! How sad that we had deprived him of his opportunity to struggle and wait tables while he waited for his big break!

This semester he completes his Associates Degree and is trying to decide where he will go to college to complete his bachelor’s degree. He also had to decide what he will get his bachelor’s degree in. He has maintained that all he wants to do is get a performing arts degree, no matter how difficult it is in that field.  We had suggested getting a bachelor’s degree in education and teaching in high school as a backup while he tried to make it big in the theater, but he ignored us. So as he was looking at and applying for colleges with performing art programs, we didn’t say a word. After the deadline for admissions passed, he came home one night all excited.

“Mom, in our English class tonight we wrote a memory of someone who made a difference in our life and I remembered Mr. Johansen. He was my Jr. High School teacher and the one that introduced me to Improv! I realized, after I wrote that paper, I would really like to be a high school teacher, teaching Creative Writing and Drama.”

I looked at Bryan, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head; I thought I would pass out. Then I stopped and quickly looked at Bryan as he started to walk out the room. He looked back at me and winked!