Oliver Lincoln Noodlemeyer

What are little siblings for if not to torment?

The Boy had the sorry lot of being the last of all us kids. He also ended up with the genes that make him particularly targetable for teasing. It's an unfortunate combination, really, that makes it possible to tease him for the same exact thing for years and years while consistently getting the same insolent reaction.

Take Burger King for example. On a road trip almost ten years ago, we were ready to stop and get some food. Dad didn't want what the rest of us wanted, so without announcing what he was doing, he decided to go through the Burger King drive-thru to get his meal, then drive us to the fast food restaurant that we wanted. As we approached Burger King and it became apparent that that's where we were going, The Boy became suddenly vocal, announcing repeatedly that he couldn't eat at Burger King: "I can't eat at Burger King. Burger King makes me sick." His repetition of this fact became more frequent and more urgent the closer we got to Burger King until Dad finally lost it and explained angrily that only he would be getting Burger King food. The rest of us could get what we wanted.

To this day, any time Burger King is mentioned around The Boy, one of the siblings invariably says, "I can't eat Burger King. Burger King makes me sick." This would irritate The Boy so much, despite the fact that it happened almost a decade ago. But recently The Boy told us that the Burger King teasing doesn't bother him as much anymore. Did he finally get over it? No. Burger King was replaced by Dirt Roadities.

I have already told this story once on my blog. At the time, I didn't realize that it would become such great teasing fodder. Two summers ago, The Boy, Mishkin, and I were trying to get to our sister-in-law's cabin using directions that The Boy had written down. It just happened that where we got lost, the direction that The Boy had written down was "dirt roadities." At the time, I'm sure he thought he was being funny, but as we were lost on "dirt roadities" with no cell reception for about an hour, the funniness of "dirt roadities" soon wore off.

Two years later, it persists as the best way to tease The Boy. All you have to do is say "dirt roadities" and he gets angry and annoyed. (If only he figured out that the key to not getting teased so much is to not get annoyed so easily...)

There are other things we can use to tease, too, though, and today as I was researching sports for work, I came across OLN, which always makes me think of Oliver Lincoln Noodlemeyer.

See, both The Boy and El Senor were living with Captain Fabuloso and Captain Mom for a few months while they were between apartments. The Boy was adjusting to his new job as a Comcast cable guy. He still loves the job and is still full of all sorts of information about cable and networks. One day as El Senor and The Boy were watching OLN (Outdoor Life Network---now known as Versus), The Boy asked, "Do you know who owns OLN?" The answer, of course, was Comcast. But El Senor didn't miss a beat and said, "Oliver Lincoln Noodlemeyer." The Boy, slightly confused, said, "Well, I don't know the specific names of the people involved, but I'm pretty sure that Comcast owns it."

So now, between a little Burger King and a little dirt roadities, we thrown in some Oliver Lincoln Noodlemeyer for good measure.

**I probably got the details slightly wrong on the Oliver Lincoln Noodlemeyer, but if El Senor or The Boy want to correct me, they're welcome to make corrections in the comments.