It's well established now, and something of an inside joke amongst our friends, that my brother, Chris, has a bit of a jerky side to him. Sure, he is for the most part a nice guy. But there's been plenty of times – after a few beers – where he's not so nice. Not towards us, mind you, but usually to complete strangers. Which of course, usually makes for big entertainment for the rest of us.
This persona has become known as Asshole Chris, and nearly every one of us has a story.
A few months ago, I tried to explain the Asshole Chris phenomenon to Christene, because she's always so damn adamant that this cannot be the case – "He's such a nice guy," she always says. And while I explained, I tried to think of how this whole asshole personality came about.
Now, it's easy to assume that it came about as soon as he hit 18/19 years old and started drinking and going out to the bar. But in fact, I think the seeds were planted much, much sooner.
When I was 18 and Chris was about a week away from turning 15, the two of us went to the movies to see the South Park movie on opening weekend. Now, this was in the days when – for big movie openings – a theatre employee would introduce the movie and talk to the crowd before the film actually started.
Before South Park, the employee offered some kind of prize – probably a free movie pass – to the person who could do the best Cartman impression. Even though it was a packed theatre, only one guy volunteered. So up he walked to the front of the theatre, grabbed the microphone, and did his impression.
It was not good. Awful, as a matter of fact. When his impression was over, the theatre remained almost dead silent – some people weren't paying attention while others were simply too polite to boo.
Except 14-year-old Christopher.
After about a one-second pause, he yelled out from our seats near the back of the room, "THAT FUCKING SUCKED!!"
He got some laughs, some scattered applause and the rest, as they say, is history.
But that was the start.
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