How to Make New Friends

Sometimes it's hard for my older brother to act normal. When he sees a normal situation where no one is violating social norms, I think he feels an uncontrollable urge to mix it up. What that usually means is that he messes with people. And on the rare occasion that his friends and family allow him to venture into the outside world unsupervised, that means he messes with strangers. He'll just think of some random thing to do and then go to the store, stand in front of the milk cooler and say, "This store puts the 'dairy' in legendary!" Just weird stuff like that. Or he'll tell people that he meets for the first time, "On a scale of 1 to Awesome, I'm probably a 31." This all goes along with his desire to shock people or throw them off. Luckily, every once in a while it backfires.

Recently he went to the bathroom at work and saw a man in the stall with his name badge showing under the wall. He had apparently left it on his belt and didn't realize he was showing everyone who was sitting behind the door. So my brother thought it would be funny to come back into the bathroom after a minute or so, eerily whisper the man's first name (like a ghost), and then walk away before getting caught. And I have to admit, that's actually kinda funny. If you follow the natural progression from there, it's a little humorous. If that were done to me and I couldn't trace the ghost voice, I'd probably freak out a little bit. And I probably wouldn't realize my name badge was displayed. So I would have come to the conclusion that one of my friends recognized my shoes and was playing a trick on me. And then I would have asked every male coworker if it was them. And when all of them denied it being them vehemently enough for me to believe them, I probably would have thought there was an actual bathroom ghost at my office.

But, as usual, these things don't turn out the way they're planned. My brother didn't walk back into the bathroom, but just stuck his face in and said "Clint!" in his stage whisper freaky voice. And just when he was about to go back out, the door flew open. It seems that "Clint" finished quicker than my brother would have hoped and was right at the door for the ghost impression.

Brother: "Clint!"
*the sound of a door opening quickly, followed by my brother gasping in shock*
Clint: "Did you just say my name?"
Brother: "Uh, yeah."
Clint: "Why? Do I know you?"
Brother: "Well, no. I just... uh...."
Clint: "So why were you saying 'Clint'? And how do you know my name?"
Brother: "It was on your name badge. I saw it under the stall. I just figured I'd mess with you a little bit. I'm sorry. I thought it was funny."
Clint: "You think it's funny to whisper a stranger's name in the bathroom?"
Brother: "Well, I did... until about ten seconds ago."

And you have to give my older brother some credit. I would have had trouble owning up to it. I would probably have to pretend that I knew a different Clint with the same shoes or fake like I had some social anxiety disorder with a side of O.C.D. So after his disaster, my brother retired that particular routine in favor of safer, less invasive public bits.