notes

Hey,
I was cleaning up some of the paperwork that was threatening to bury me under a landslide at the office and came across something that you may, or may not want to keep around.

"Rules:
1. no smoking, please use the patio.
2. you can reach the washrooms through the main restaurant
3. In lieu of clinking glasses, and thereby breaking them, anyone wishing to make the new couple kiss need to use this hula hoop. I understand their kiss will last roughly as long as you perform...

As a sibling, you get tremendous insights into the personality of your brother. The only issue is that you always take the worst possible inference from those observations.
Now that I'm old and have the benefit of time and 2000 kilometres of distance, I see that there might be space for multiple interpretations.

One. We always thought he was stubborn. A typical anecdote about Kevin might relate how mom and dad told him that he was to stay at the kitchen table until he had finished some much-loathed meal, possibly involving Brussels sprouts. Hours later, as Roger and Margaret prepared to turn the lights out and lock up the doors, Kevin was still sitting on the yellow metal chairs Dad had 'borrowed' from work. My brother was not going to be the one to give in. He was stubborn.
That said, another way of looking at it is that Kevin's stubbornness is actually Persistence. Sylvia - you can look at this way - you know your husband won't give up or give in.

Two. We always thought Kevin was a pessimist. You'll often hear some grumbling around him. For instance, just recently we put thirty beers into his backpack before hiking up into the Bugaboo Mountains. Put into perspective, that's 30 beers at 350 milliliters or ten and a half litres of beer in his pack. Roughly an extra twenty-five pounds of beer, plus kahlua, plus rum, for five of us. For two days and one night. On top of his normal backpacking load of tent, sleeping bag, clothes and the like.
While he whined at the prospect, once the pack was in place, Kevin just got on with the job and moved uphill faster than the rest of us slowpokes.
My advice to Sylvia - just keep him busy and the pessimism turns into realism.

Three. Taciturn. Kevin, for years, has said little to us. Very little. In fact, we had years without many words between us. But, over time, we became better and better at interpreting the various intonations of Kevin's grunts, headshakes, nods, eyerolls and sighs.
We used to think that Kevin was, well, introverted. But what it really meant is that he was just waiting for the right person to share his thoughts with.

Sylvia, I would like to welcome not just you but your entire family to our side - the Wallis family. Hopefully, in time, you can add to the rules on how to interact with your newly acquired Kevin."

Cheers
Nigel