Dr. Demolition

One of my goofy brothers has the misfortune of always breaking everything he touches. He doesn't mean to, and he isn't overly clumsy, he just breaks stuff. I always hesitate to lend him anything because I'm fairly certain it will come back to me broken. Ever since he was old enough to have something with a motor, he's tinkered with it until it was broken enough to necessitate outside help to repair it. His cars have always been in states of repair. Even if they were new. Once, he helped "fix" a friend’s car and it ended up catching on fire!

Needless to say, the scariest thing to lend him is a car. When he was in high school, he borrowed my Pop's BMW to take a girl to a school dance. I'm sure my Pop was a bit wary of him using it, but he was kind enough to want to make my brother's night special. The date went well and my brother made it home by curfew. He parked the car in the driveway and made sure it was locked up tight. The next morning my Pop went out to see how wrecked - um, I mean the status of the vehicle and he about had a heart attack to see that the car was 1/2 way through the closed garage door. I'm sure that after the blood stopped spurting out of his ears and his eyes were back in his head, he calmly went into the house to find out why/how my brother wrecked the car.

My brother swore on his life that he did not wreck the car and that he parked it correctly, undamaged. Both guys were really upset because it was hard to argue that the car wasn't crashed. Upon further investigation it was determined that the starter had a short in it and as it zapped, the car (a standard) lurched forward. Throughout the night, the car slowly lurched its way through the garage door until it couldn't go any farther.

I'm sure Pop felt badly for blaming my brother but who could blame him - what with his track record and all.

Recently, I loaned my brother my lawn mower with the hopes that I'd get it back in working order. When I got it back it worked all right, but about 3 minutes after I started using it, one of the wheels fell off. That's just about the way it always goes. He's just a one man wrecking crew. Bless his destructive little heart.