For Bubs and Brian--yes the subject of the blog from yesterday was mean, but remember the time you caused me to have a breakdown?

I always love you guys comments and there were a couple from yesterday's blog that really made me laugh. Yes, I agree it's probably easier for my little brother to text back his best friend. Or to put it another way the guy that Brian has known nearly his whole life, who really was his only "brother" growing up and didn't take plenty of opportunities to beat the crap out of him. Yes, I get it...Bubs and Brian have some sort of weird man bond where they don't actually have to communicate to stay best friends. 

Bubs read yesterday's blog and claims he had no idea we had scared the crap out of Brian then sat on him for 20 minutes to "protect" him. I don't see how as that's one of our stories that have become a family legend. I suppose to be fair, the infamous night where Bubs came over and charmed me with his math skills was a few weeks in the future. Dumbass, imagine if we hadn't have done that to Brian...I may have actually had the opportunity to hook up with the Wisconsin farm boy and would have been day dreaming about him later on that spring and didn't give a hoop if I passed my math class? You're cute but so was he. 

And Brian did finally text me back (with some news that I've been dying to hear--I can't talk about it yet because he's worried it will get jinxed but I'm so excited) and he remembered that I actually did fart on him, Jess was punching him and Jenn was doing little joint locks on his toes instead of just tickling him. And that he was truly scared for his life and didn't say a peep even though we were causing him severe pain. Ok fine, maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle but...smartass...we still have screenshots of the prank you pulled on me and while I can laugh at it now, this has to be the meanest thing any of us siblings ever did to each other. 

So little Brian was a computer genius. I don't know the particulars but he got all these Microsoft certifications when he was like 9 and 10 years old. It was something he took a major interest in and could do well. Brian would regularly get calls from our neighbors, our church or even our schools to go and fix  computers when he was very little. Unfortunately, Brian also used his powers for evil. 

I will tell the story from my perspective and then get into what actually happened. Bubs had lost his phone and was going way across the state for a baseball tournament where the would be staying overnight. Usually me and some of the other girlfriends would try to drive ourselves to the games but this particular weekend happened to coincide with one of my gymnastics meets. I was really bummed that unless he borrowed someone's phone (which I knew he wouldn't) it was going to be well over two days without talking to him.  I also remember the athletics bus broke down so at the very last minute the baseball team had to switch plans and drive themselves across the state to get to the tournament. I believe the left on a Thursday afternoon. 

I got home from school on Friday and Brian was sitting on the family computer in the living room with a very shocked look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he said that he didn't think I look at the screen--remember Brian was 10, I was 18. I asked him what he was talking about and he played me perfectly by just saying "Danielle, I don't think you should see this" which of course meant I had to look. On the screen was the San Antonio Express-News website with huge headline letters "Local Baseball Star Killed in Car Wreck." It took me a second to comprehend what I was reading and as my focus came back to me I saw Bub's picture from Max Preps and the little sub headline said "Bubs McK... dead in fiery car crash. It is suspected he was distracted while receiving oral sex from a cheerleader."  

Of course the little sub headline should have clued me in that something was afoot but I stared at Bub's picture on the screen in utter shock and horror. I couldn't believe it. I scanned it again and it seemed 100% real.  I stood up and screamed and my sisters came running downstairs and I just pointed to the screen and they started freaking out and grabbed me and tried to hold me on the couch. While I was just in a state of pure panic. We were all crying together and I just thought I had to call Bub's mom. I got her on the phone and she was as sweet sounding as always. I wasn't quite sure what the protocol was, whether the girlfriend should offer condolences to the mom or vice versa so I just sat there huffing and puffing "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." All I heard her say was "honey, what is wrong?" I dropped the phone so must have heard the three of us crying while the call was still connected. One of my sisters had the presence of mind to call my mom while she was at school and told her she needed to come home right away.  My mom asked her what was wrong and she explained that Bubs had died in a car crash and we'd seen it on the news. My mom is always so cool and she reasoned that if something happened to one of the school's students, the school would know well in advance of a city newspaper that was almost an hour away. She asked what website so she pulled it up on her computer and her version of the Express-News had no mention of a "fiery car crash" as front page news. But she didn't want to dismiss it out of hand either because it really could have been serious. So she left her classroom and went to the principals office and he was just as confused as everyone else. He called the coach who confirmed that everyone was just fine and they were just getting back to their hotel after the afternoon practice.  My mom called us back and said they had verified Bubs was just fine and she would come home to get to the bottom of everything.  I still didn't believe her because what looked like the real newspaper was still up on the screen of our computer. 

I picked up my phone and saw that I had a huge number of missed calls  from Bub's mom but the second  I was about to call her back, an incoming call came in from a local number that I didn't recognize. I was sure it was going to be the sheriff telling me I they were sending over a car so I could help them identify the body and I could not answer it. Jenn answered it and she started shrieking "Danielle, Dani---its Craig! Its Craig!" I stood there, even more shocked than I had been a minute prior wanting to believe her but my senses were being jerked back and forth so quickly that I had no idea. I grabbed the phone and asked "is this really you?" He was like "of course it is, what is going on down there? Why are people saying 20 baseball players were killed in a bus crash?"  I couldn't compose myself and handed the phone to my sister who explained that we had just seen the cover of the San Antonio newspaper with his picture saying he had died in a car crash. He confirmed that he was just fine and wanted to talk to me again. I told her to tell him that I wasn't in any position to talk but that after I composed myself, I would call him at that number. 

The three of us sat on the couch just trying to catch our breath at the absolute whirlwind that had just taken over our house. While this was going on, I guess word had gotten back to town from the players because my phone would not stop ringing with calls and texts from my classmates asking me what was going on. Maybe 20-30 minutes later my mom, Bubs mom and...Brian...all walked in through the kitchen garage door.  My mom told Brian to get up to his room and he best prepare himself because she had never been this mad before.

With all the commotion, the 3 of us hadn't even realized that at the first thought that his "joke" was taken a lot more seriously than he anticipated and he booked it. When I didn't answer my phone, Bub's mom got in her car to come over to see what was wrong with me and on the way, she spotted a kid trying not to be seen by darting in and out bushes and weeds along the highway but clearly trying to get somewhere.  It took her a minute but she recognized him as my little brother which really made her think something really terrible was going on at our house. She tried to get him into her car but he kept running away from her so she called my mom who met her and after a few minutes of a chase they were able to get him into my mom's van. 

The two moms took a look at the webpage and thank god, they already knew everything was fine because the "website" looked real to them too. I got the amazing experience of hearing my future mother in law read the whole thing out loud including the part "it is suspected he was distracted while receiving oral sex from a cheerleader." Even though she knew Bubs was okay, it took her a minute to catch her breath because it looked so incredibly real that her son's picture was on the cover of a major newspaper announcing his early demise. 

So as the house started to normalize a bit, my parents started to get to the bottom of what happened. To show that the 3 sisters may just not be the most evil of the siblings, this is how premediated Brian's little plan was. He heard that Bubs was going to a tournament and I wouldn't be able to go. Bub's didn't lose his phone, Brian took it out of his car when he had been over one night because Brian reasoned it would be "funnier" if I couldn't get in touch with Bubs right away. Brian somehow got access to the San Antonio News-Express coding and spent days recreating their website on his own server space to make it look as real as possible. He even had to scramble when the school bus broke down and recreate some things because his original version had the entire team dying because the bus driver had been distracted by the full on orgy going on between the baseball players and cheerleaders.  He spent about a week working on it and had completely ignored all his school work and even told his school that he needed to work on an update to their computers so he could work on his "webpage" during recess and lunch.  I don't know the legal ins and outs of it, but Bubs and I have since reasoned that had he actually published the page instead of hosting it on his own server, my parents may have been sued by everyone from the News-Express to the other parents on the baseball team to the school, etc...

What's even worse is that I still loved gymnastics but I choked so bad that next day because I was still out of it that I decided that I was going to quite competing forever. That's not totally Brian's fault as I was already really burnt out but at the same time I was really hoping that I would do well at a meet to get my spark back and maybe still try to get in touch with college gymnastics programs that had a reasonable to chance to be a walk-on.  

For his part, Brian got severely punished...I probably don't want to get into it here but it was pretty old school Texas. While it took me well over a year to fully get over it, I actually started to feel bad for him because the good old wooden spoon met butt, way more than it ever had for the rest of us. Sometimes I still grit my teeth at the feeling of seeing that page--with my beloved boyfriend dying because he was getting oral from a...cheerleader...of all people.