Teaching Dallin to Fetch

One of the key moments of my childhood was the day that Andy and I realized that our younger brother Dallin was going to take extra time to develop the common sense portion of his brain. We came across this piece of intelligence by sheer happenstance. I had always thought that along with being born with defined muscles, Dallin was born with a natural tan, but I was about to learn an important secret.
I walked in the back door expecting to smell mom’s fresh bread, but as I entered the house my nose didn’t even have a chance to survey its surroundings as a piercing scream filled my ears with a horrible pain. I made my way toward the bathroom and the source of the blood curdling noise.
“You’re washing off my skin!” I heard Dallin screaming.
“Be still boy,” my mom was still calm, but on the verge of losing it. “This is not a tan, it is dirt. You need to learn how to wash yourself. I should have done this a long time ago.”
Apparently my mom was giving Dallin a bath. This was highly unusual, in fact I couldn’t remember the last time that my mom had bathed any of us. A few minutes later Dallin immerged from the bathroom crying and with a towel around his waist.
“Mom scrubbed my skin off,” he sadly mentioned to me on his way up the stairs to his room.”
He was white! I couldn’t believe it, all of this time I thought that Dallin had a tan and it was really nothing but dirt. This new information set in motion the thinking wheels in my mind. I was coming up with a brilliant plan and I had to find Andy so we could work out the details.
I found Andy outside in the tree house with a plastic gun in his pocket, a fake police badge pinned sideways on his shirt, cowboy boots, and his superman cape.
“Command, command pick up this is Agent Skelton,” He whispered into an imaginary microphone on his Mickey Mouse watch. “I have eliminated the threat here on planet Z and I am ready to be beamed back home.”
He looked a little disturbed so I didn’t want to interrupt his imagination just yet. He then began tapping his watch as if the pretend microphone could actually break. “Darn piece of junk,” he said to himself. The next thing I knew he was looking up, obviously at some dark, looming, imaginary figure.
“I, I don’t have it, ii-its gone,” he said to the thin air.
“Liar!” Andy screamed in a scratchy voice, pretending to be his own arch enemy.
My brother then made a loud bang sound and lay on the tree trunk pretending to be fatally injured. I had had enough and was ready to make an end to this embarrassing moment in my brother’s history.
“Alright Captain Kirk playtime is over. Climb on down here I want to talk to you about something,” I said in a condescending tone.
Once we were safe in the confines of our secluded room I made my proposal.
“So come to find out, Dallin is having trouble developing a sharp mind,” I began as I related to him the story of Dallin’s bath time.
Our diabolical plan was simple, we would get Dallin to run all of our errands for us. All we would have to do is use our watches as props and tell him that we were going to see how fast he could do certain projects. The key to the whole operation were the watches and the phrase “wow that was even faster than the last time.” We decided to give it a test run.
“Dallin let’s see how fast you can run in the house and get us some of Dad’s chocolate,” I slyly said.
“Won’t I get in trouble?
“Not if you go fast enough,” I replied. “Ready, set, go.”
He was off like a bullet and in no time he had returned with our prize.
“Wow that was even faster than the last time,” Andy shouted.
I elbowed Andy in the side. “This is the first time we’ve done this there is not last time. What’s wrong with you?” I whispered under my breath.
“Oh yeah,” he replied.
“Actually Dallin you did that in exactly 37 seconds,” I said correcting Andy’s almost fatal mistake. “Let’s see if you can do it again, only faster.”
Before I could even say go, he was off.
“Alright Andy this time when he comes back you can say your line.”
“That was even faster than the next time,” Andy shouted as Dallin returned with more chocolate.
“Last time, “I corrected.
“I mean last time”
“Wow, I am fast,” Dallin bragged.
“Yes, you are little brother, way faster than either of us that’s why this is such a fun game.” I deviously replied.
Our little game even expanded to include Alex once he was out of diapers, and for a while we had a blissful arrangement. Eventually Dallin started to develop the common sense that he had lacked and started using this game on Alex and Marne. Andy and I decided to stop before our parents caught on to our little game. Dallin however, is still getting away playing fetch with Alex. For example, a few months ago Dallin bought a new truck here in Salt Lake off of eBay. He told Alex he would time him to see how fast he could drive the truck to his house in South Dakota. That weekend Alex and his wife drove off to South Dakota, both believing that they were in some kind of secret race. Dallin even went above and beyond all expectations when he gave them a nice bowling trophy he had bought at a thrift shop. He simply scratched their names in with a paperclip. They have proudly placed the trophy Dallin gave them in their apartment next to their statue of Milli Vanilli. The cute couple is always confused when people ask them if they bowl.