The Master Manipulator - a guest blog from sister Wilson

    This morning's post is a guest blog from my sister Wilson.  I'm not saying that she is right on anything that she reports below, although there is strong evidence that she is correct, the strongest being that I am currently in the Bahamas and she is writing a blog and babysitting my son. 

    You may not realize it, but last week’s blog (a few burnt ends) was intended for me.  You see, the Ongion asked me over a year ago if I would be interested in writing a guest blog, and although I responded in the affirmative, I just hadn’t quite gotten around to it.  A few months ago, he dangled
the idea that he was considering wrapping up the blog in the relatively near future, and had hopes of compiling it into a book for his children.  He appealed to my ego that such a book just wouldn’t be complete without a guest blog from me.  What the Ongion forgot to realize, however, was that unlike him, I am not at all motivated by my ego….so I still hadn’t gotten around to it.

Earlier this month I accepted a job offer, after years of being a stay at home mom.  I can imagine the Ongion, sitting at his desk with the realization that if I hadn’t made time to write a guest blog when I wasn’t working, there was little chance that I would get around to it, once I was employed.  It was time for action. So today, he published a blog entitled, “a few burnt ends.”  Out of 

You know who also manipulates?  Nick Fury, that's who

all of the blogs that he has published thus far, this was the worst.  He claimed technical difficulties, but I don’t buy it.  It was disjointed.  It made me think about the bark on a pork butt and the gross things in a hotel room all while being assaulted by a series of painful malapropisms (a word that he pluralized with an apostrophe.) He even posted it late. To those of you who do not know my brother as well as I do, this may seem innocent….but that is only because you have not yet been exposed to a deep layer of the Ongion.  You did not grow up with the master manipulator.

     When we were growing up, we children were always given assigned chores.  Most of us, like them or not, completed the chores and moved on with our lives.  Not the Ongion.  His mantra was to work smarter, not harder…and his goal was to minimize any and all chores that might come his way.  If it

was his job to dry the dishes, he would inspect each piece of cutlery and dining ware that came his way, and inevitably find a spot or grease mark that would prompt him to pass the item back to the washer for further cleaning.  If you were the washer, you either had to remain captive to the whims of dish inspector #12 for the remainder of the foreseeable evening…or excuse him from his duties and wash and dry the dishes yourself.    More times than not, it felt less painful to spend a resentful evening alone at the sink then put up with the antics. Lest you think we could simply complain, you must know that my parents would not tolerate any fighting over chores. If bickering erupted around a chore, we may as well hang a sign around our necks that read, "oh, please, give us additional work".  Lest you think I could simply retaliate, I was seven years

2/3 of a sandwich according to The Ongion

 younger than the Ongion, and had vowed that I would never grow up to be that mean.  So the Ongion would nitpick us into frustration, and his eventual release from duty,but stalling was just one tactic  

that he employed.  There was another that was even more annoying, and unfortunately on me, the most effective.  I refer to it as the dry cheese sandwich approach.

     One of the chores that was in our rotation was the task of making lunches for the children in the house.  I am the youngest in the family, so this chore usually meant lunches for just 3 of us; the Ongion, myself, and one other sibling.  The parameters were few.  You could make anything available in the house if there was enough to go around.  Peanut butter and jelly was the most common, which involved having to stir the oil back into the peanut butter to make it soft enough to spread.  Occasionally, there was fluff.   There may have been lunchmeat, now and again, but by lunchmeat I really only mean bologna.  There was cheese, and with just 3 kids left in the house, there

The other 1/3

was canned tuna.  Almost any time the Ongion was assigned the chore

of making lunches, I knew the conversation that would occur the following morning, and every morning that he had that chore.

Me:  “What are you making for lunches?”

Ongion: “Dry Cheese Sandwiches”

Me: “Dry cheese sandwhich?  That’s just you putting one slice of cheese between two pieces of white bread. Can't you at least put mustard or a slice of bologna with it?"

Ongion:  "Nope.  Dry Cheese Sandwich”

Me:  "Gross."

Ongion: “Well, if you don’t like it, you can always make your own lunch.”

     So the choices for me was either make my own lunch, or try and choke down a dry piece of cheese between 2 pieces of clearance rack white bread.  Master manipulator.  Man, he was good.

So, my other sibling and I would usually acquiesce and end up making a can of tuna, making our sandwich, and heading off to school, at which point the Ongion would swoop in, and make himself a tuna sandwich with our leftovers.

See, I told you he was good.

So when I was reading his blog this morning, call it PTSD, but all I could think was “He’s dry cheese sandwiching me”….  If I don’t like it, do it myself.

So, Ongion,  you got me.  I promise next week I will do my guest blog.  And I promise, it will be better than dry cheese. - Sister Wilson

Sister Wilson and the Ongion