E is for....

Eric (shown with his girlfriend Alicia)

Hah! Bet you thought it'd be Elisabeth, didn't you!

Eric is the younger of my two brothers. He was born May 8, 1981, which makes him almost exactly 7 years younger than me. According to my mother, I was quite worried that "the baby" would come on my birthday and she wouldn't be around for my birthday. Instead, when he was 2 years old, he tried to stand on a ball, fell, and broke his leg the day before my birthday which meant my birthday was celebrated 11 days after the fact. Delayed response, I guess.

Eric is the only one of my three siblings I have no memory of visiting in the hospital when he was born and therefore, I don't think I did (if I can remember seeing Jason at the hospital and I was only 3 years old, I think I'd remember Eric).

I have things in common with all of my siblings. With Eric in particular, I felt a certain kinship growing up because we were both much more emotional than Jason. And we weren't athletic at all, and Jason was. My sister didn't come along until Eric was 5 and I was 12, so that made Eric the youngest for quite some time, so I guess it's not surprising that we would be more highly strung than Jason who was a middle child.

All of my family has some creative interests, but this was much more pronounced in Eric. He is so right-brained he practically failed algebra (a left-brained subject), but aced geometry (a right-brained subject). Academics were never really his strong point, which was probably hard for him since Jason and I did so well and Eric had many of the same teachers we had. But, he was really brilliant at drawing, and pottery, and painting, and any kind of artistic endeavor. Personally, I can't draw worth sh*t, and I've never tried pottery, and I'm pretty sure I'd be miserable at painting.

Eric isn't shy about giving hugs. And when he gives hugs, they are enormous, rib-crunching bear hugs. They are real hugs, not the kind acqaintances give each other. He is so loving and understanding, I think more so than the rest of us (siblings, that is). Which is sort of funny because he was the one who was most angry when my parents got divorced and really took that anger out on the rest of us. But, then he got counseling--people would call it anger-management these days--and ever since then, I think he has been more well-adjusted than most people I know. Perhaps the world would have fewer problems if all of us had anger-management counseling at an early age.

Eric shares my love of fantasy science fiction (as does Jason) which is great because we can exchange books. His ideal job would be the owner of a used bookstore. As it is, he currently works at a gas station, sometimes at the counter and sometimes making pizzas for delivery, which is perfect for him because he can read while on the job (gas stations in small towns in Iowa are not particularly busy). He has taken college classes, but he's fulfilled his general requirements and he's not sure what he wants to major in, so he thinks it'd be a waste of money to take more classes just to be taking them--a much more practical approach than me or Jason who both went to college right away, majored in a subject we found interesting and didn't think about what we would do with that information until after we graduated.

Eric lives in Iowa, not terribly far from my mother, and I don't see him all that often. Particularly since I stay at my grandmother's which is much further away and he has a busy work schedule. And neither one of us is particularly good at keeping in touch with people. But when we do see each other, it's like no time has passed at all and that's really great.

In due time (when we get around to J and M) you'll get to meet my other siblings. It seems kind of odd to be talking about Eric before Jason since we automatically describe each other or list each other in chronological order! But, I suppose it's kind of like at school when they start calling people off from the end of the alphabet instead of the beginning--Eric gets to be first for a change!