JOHN!

From MySpace, April 2, 2007:

I got a phone call yesterday from an international number.  My first reaction was to sit there looking dumbly at the phone wondering who would be calling me from outside the United States.  Then it occurred to me that my only sibling just happens to be residing in the Netherlands for the semester and perchance it was him?  It was.

I was going to try some pleasantries since it's the first time he's called me since he's been over there but he quickly did away with that, starting by saying, "Becky, hey, it's John, your brother, [he must have learned that phone technique from our mother who always starts her voicemail messages, "Becky, this is your mom," as if I wouldn't recognize her voice] and I'm in some serious trouble.  I'm getting deported." 

To back up, John got a letter a couple weeks ago saying that he was going to be deported because his residency hadn't been filed appropriately or something.  It didn't turn out to be quite the disaster that it seemed to be because there was something wrong with the mail system such that he wasn't getting most of his mail, including the warning letters that preceded this deportation notice.  He got it worked out through the school that he would contest the notice on account of not getting his mail and since it takes around 6 months for such infractions to go to trial, he would be back in the U.S. by that point anyway, thus skirting the issue altogether.

But he said he was calling yesterday because the police had come to his room and told him that he needed to start packing up his things because his trial was at 9:30 the next morning (today) and they were going to "hold" him until he got on a plane back to the U.S.  "Basically, they're going to put me in jail until I can get a flight home," he said.  "I can't get a hold of Mom and Dad and this is going to happen tomorrow."  I was trying to walk him through scenarios and ask how this was even possible since he'd been told by the school that he'd have a good six months but he said the police said it was a government matter and they weren't working in conjunction with the school.  The best he could do is try to talk to an official at his school in the morning before his trial but that the deportation people weren't buying his excuse that he hadn't been getting his mail and he was pretty sure he was going to have to come home. 

I then jumped in with, "OK, I'll try and find Mom and Dad.  Don't worry, it might not be all bad..."  He interrupts me with, "Becky, Becky, Becky, NO!  Think about what day it is!  Ha ha ha!  April Fools!"  And then he laughed heartily into the phone while I yelled "JOHN!" a couple of times until I'd calmed down enough to laugh too.  Man, he got me GOOD.  He was very convincing. 

When I decided I didn't need to yell at him any longer, I asked him about his recent trip to Paris because Dad had told me he went into the catacombs.  I'm obsessed with them and whenever I hear that someone has gone to Paris, the first thing I ask is, "Did you go in the catacombs?"  I never have.  I don't get to Paris all that often.  Or ever, aside from those two days after I graduated from high school, a trip which I remember little of aside from the fact that I didn't make it to the catacombs.  John said he took a video or something but it wouldn't upload to YouTube.  He didn't have much time to talk after that because he was going to go get a mohawk.

And that is my brother.