Mr. Disproportionate Response

(Note: This is a repost of what was posted on the 21st. Some folks were having problems with adding comments, and for the life of me, I can’t seem to fix it. So… let’s try a whole different post.)

So, sometime yesterday, I get this really random IM. It’s just, “Hi.” Being no stranger to random, weird IM’s from folks who like to play the, “I have a new screen name and know who you are but you don’t know who I am” game, I ask who it is. No response for something like five minutes. When there’s finally a response it’s “How are you, (First name of Mr. Disproportionate Response)?” What the hell.

Okay, so here I am, thinking that someone’s being a douche, and I have an idea of who. I went to middle and high schools with this guy named Chris. Chris had some problems. At once point, Chris thought that he was a TROLL. Not someone who musses internet forums. No… a mythical fantasy creature that lived in a tree and took sacrifices of human carpenters and weird things like that. He later moved on to making people deeply uncomfortable in high school and tried hard to be a goth, but the goths were like, “oh, hell no,” and then he got kicked out of school. He later resurfaced in my life after having been kicked out of his family’s home (for being weird, mind you…) and came to crash with my dad and I for a couple of nights. I think my dad finally booted him after three or four weeks and a $600 phone bill and using a love letter from my then-fianceé as a place to write video game cheat codes and flipping out in my kitchen one day and coming after me with a gun show el-cheapo katana that his father gave him after a war with some elves or something…Anyway… he vanishes again after we kick him out for having too much of the crazy. YEARS later, like after my divorce, I start getting these cryptic e-mails. After a lengthy week of WTF and calling in some favors from my l33t friends, they track down who’s sending the e-mails. It’s Troll-Chris. Troll-Chris has found my e-mail address through someone on MySpace, and is now dead-set on being all buddy-buddy with me again. Across the continent. Uuuh, no.

But the point is this–I thought these IM’s I started getting yesterday were from him. He always called me by my whole name. Only my mom, dad, and Troll Chris consistently do this. So I kinda ripped into him, told him that he could either skip the drama and games, or fuck off. He says nothing else, and disappears about an hour later. Today, I’m at work, and I see the same username pop up. I could only leave it alone for so long, before my malicious streak kicked in, and had to start taunting him to keep being scary. For like, a half hour, I’m berating the hell out of this guy, and he’s not saying a damn thing.

…Before I find out that it’s my BROTHER. I’ve not seen him since he was an infant, and haven’t really said more than about four words to him since then. Apparently, my dad gave him my login name, and.. voila! There he was. We talked for a few hours, and sort of caught up, and I came to feel like an utter ass.

But in a fun way!