Top Five Fridays: Fun Big Brother Memories

This is my regular feature called Top Five Fridays. Here I'll list some of my favorite things like, Top 5 Ways to Annoy a Michigan Fan or Top 5 Most Overrated Athletes (cough cough, Brett Favre, cough cough)..... Have no fear, we'll get to both those topics in good time. At the end there will also be a section for those that just missed the cut.

I apologize for missing last week's Top 5. It was about half written and then last weekend got rather busy with people coming in town for a wedding. Then I got pretty sick this week and I didn't finish it until just now, so hopefully this is good enough to quench your thirst from the past two weeks. In honor of the wedding that happened last Saturday here in Chicago, I decided to do a post in honor of the groom. He was my big brother in the fraternity and as we all know, he can be a bit crazy at times. So here are my...

Top 5 Favorite Big Brother Memories

These are just a few of my favorites from the past ten years of knowing the man. I'd like to encourage everyone to post your own favorite memories and quotes in the comments.

1. I Can't Be Your Superman
Sophomore year our fraternity formal was in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Our pledge class was known for how much they liked the drink, so this was an opportunity for them all to do so legally at the age of 19. At this point in my life, I was still pretty square. That New Year’s Eve was the first time I’d ever had a drink and I don’t think I had another one until we got to Canada. The trip itself was the source of many great college stories: the extremely dumb education major I was dating at the time and my first trip to a casino to name two.

The night of the actual formal, however, provided two memorable quotes from my big that would live in infamy. He knew I wasn’t a drinker and he saw me getting pretty tanked, so at one point we went out to get some air. He, himself, was completely in the can. We were sitting on the back steps of this trashy banquet hall when he uttered this line:

“Cap, the key to being drunk is to never act like it.”

Today I find this hilarious because it’s his biological younger brother, and not my big, who is the king of not acting like it. My big always acts like it. Either way, the conversation also provided one of the quirky, amusing and somewhat truthful things that I’ve taken with me ever since. For reasons that may not always be prevalent on the surface, I really looked up to him from the moment I showed up at rush. He was the president of the fraternity and he was a funny guy, always lighting up a room when he entered. It was clear from the start that in a lot of ways, I’d hoped I would be able to captivate an audience the way he did. He recognized this fairly early on in our friendship and, in that same conversation, told me a story.

I’m not sure if I’m getting this right, because it’s been almost ten years, but when he was a young Pi Kapp himself my big had a similar conversation with one of our older brothers named Keith. I think it was Keith. Whoever it was gave my big a little Superman toy and told him, “You shouldn’t look up to anyone except Superman.” My big told me the same thing that night, and when he “graduated” that spring, he gave me the Superman toy at Senior Pass Downs.

2. Mr. Bonilla, if you please.
This next story is also probably one of my favorite moments being a sports fan. It was my sophomore year and one of our other fraternity brothers, G-Lowe, got four tickets and a parking pass for the Cincinnati Reds game against the New York Mets down in Riverfront Stadium from his dad's company and he couldn't use them. Instead, myself, my big, my little (Swamp) and another one of our brothers, who we’ll call “Warden” because he held that position when I was pledging, drove down to the game.

We took my big’s car and he drove, though he informed me early on that I would likely be driving us back to Oxford. We got there in plenty of time for the start of the game and it didn’t take long for the Warden and my big to get a couple beers deep. The seats were amazing. If I remember correctly, we were on the aisle in the third row right next to the visitor’s dugout on the home plate side. Some of the best seats I’ve ever sat in.

The guy that hit third for the Mets at the time was Bobby Bonilla. You probably remember him. After a quick leadoff out, Bonilla stepped into the on deck circle. Immediately, my big and the Warden started laying into him and that’s when my big came up with this doozy:

“Bobby Bo, you bloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

He said it multiple times, among other things, and it was obvious that Bonilla heard him. He was standing mere feet from us and the park was still relatively empty. Another quick out and it was Bonilla’s turn to bat. The first pitch he saw, he crushed. The thing didn’t look like it would ever land, but it eventually ended up in the upper deck. Bonilla trotted slowly around the bases, but as he rounded third, his eyes locked onto us. We were all standing, in silence, and Bonilla never took his eyes off us the entire 90 feet to home. He stepped on the plate, turned and walked back to the dug out. Starred at us the whole way.

3. The First Impression
In order to join a fraternity at Miami University, the first step is to attend “Open House,” a weekend where each potential rushee has to visit 75% of the houses on campus. During these visits, you will watch a repetitive slide show, listen to a speech from the Rush Chair about how they are the best house on campus, and then you are whisked away individually and given a quick tour of the house while a couple of the brothers have a five minute conversation with you and determine whether you are worth talking to again.

To be perfectly honest, when the guys from my freshman dorm were herded into the basement of the Pi Kapp house, we were unimpressed. We were a close-knit group of guys that played a lot of sports together and caused a raucous on occassion. We had also just come from Phi Psi, which, to most of us, was the best house on campus. A guy that graduated a year ahead of me in high school was a Phi Psi and although I originally had no interest in going Greek, he was the one that changed my mind. The second we were seated at Pi Kapp, one of the brothers started ripping on JoeJoe, a kid that lived across the hall from me, for wearing a Notre Dame hat. Now, to be fair, anyone wearing Notre Dame apparell deserves all the chiding he gets, but we were all friends and didn’t know this frat boy, so we weren’t amused.

The first time I met my eventual big brother was at a “Coke Date” later that fall. Coke dates were when the active brothers would take out potential rushees and try to impress them enough so that they would come back for Formal Rush in January. They were named as such because you weren’t allowed to have alcohol present for these events. For my coke date, my big came and picked me up at my dorm and we went to Hole in the Wall bar. There I met G-Lowe, Bally, Nine-O and Fitz. I’m not sure who else was present. Either way, we shot some pool and I beat my big in bubble hockey, that's all I really remember. I had a good time and was starting to reverse my feelings from that day of open house.

As my big drove me back to my dorm, he told me that they were having a formal brotherhood dinner at the house a couple of days later and that he wanted me to come. I agreed and he told me he would pick me up from my dorm again. The night of the dinner, he never showed. Never called. Nothing. I got a phone call the next day and he was apologized profusely for forgetting to come get me and he said that we’d go grab dinner up town some time on him. It’s ten years later and I’m still waiting for that dinner.

4. Freshman Formal
A moment that was more “big brotherly” and less humorous happened almost immediately upon joining the fraternity my freshman year. We had our formal in Indianapolis, Indiana that spring and I wanted to take my high school girlfriend, Lizzie. The problem was that she was still a senior in high school and didn’t have a car, and neither did I, so the four hour trip to Oxford was going to be a challenge.

My dad agreed to drive her halfway, and my big brother agreed to take me to Columbus to get her. We hitched another ride from someone, Darb I think, to Indianapolis, and then when I asked my big if he could take us back to Oxford, he said, “Sure, but we’re leaving the top down so I hope you don’t mind getting your faces blown off.” Cute. The top stayed up because it was freezing, but the point of the story is how a few guys went out of their way to help a brother out. I hadn't known these guys for very long, but already it felt like home thanks to guys like my big.

The entire weekend was capped off with a trip with Lizak all the way to Cleveland and back to drop her off. We stopped at my parents for dinner and finally hit Oxford at about 2:00 am. Amazingly, we made it the whole weekend without any traffic violations. That is, until I got pulled over in the fraternity house driveway for going 36 in a 25 on Spring Street. Are you kidding me?

5. What does DG mean to you?
The story I was going to put in this spot has to do with a walkie-talkie and the voice of God, but I have a strong feeling that everyone reading this knows who my big brother is and most of you already know the story. For those that don’t, ask your significant others, I don’t want to be the one to tell you.

Instead, I’ll give you this brief one that I wasn’t present for, but heard about during pledging. Delta Gamma sorority has a pledge event every year called “Anchor King.” It’s somewhat of a beauty pageant for the pledges in the fraternities on campus, except it’s more of a popularity contest than anything. There is a talent portion and then they give each contestant a question to answer on stage. My big was our representative when he was pledging and apparently his question was, “What does DG mean to you?”

His answer: “Dorky Gongola.”

Something leads me to believe this wasn’t the answer they were looking for.


“Juuuuust a bit outside. He tried the corner and missed.”

This section will be dedicated to some of the classic lines spit out by my big brother. Feel free to post your own favorite stories or lines in the comments section.

Cash is King.
Seriously.
Do you want to go practice making babies?
Do you want to practice kissing?
My girlfriend fell off a cliff and died on impact. It was tragic.
Do you want to hold hands with interlocking fingers?