Tuesdays wih Matthew

I have worked, every single day for the past 12 years, with my mom and my brother. Side by side. Together. Every day. And, somehow, we are still all stab wound free. Actually, we all still completely enjoy eachother’s company....strange.

My mom and my brother go out to lunch together every single day. I usually opt out to go to the gym or stay in for lunch since I’m not as rich as they both think they are. But on the once a week lunch I do take with them, I am always so happy about the family into which I was born.

But this blog is actually about how great my brother is. We don’t sit at lunch (or even holiday dinner tables) and talk about the weather, or business or American Idol or some bullshit. We talk about important issues and I always walk away from these meetings learning something new.

Like a few weeks ago, when it was freezing cold, I offered up the question of the day for us to ponder while we waited for our food. I said "I would just like to know EXACTLY who the fist human was and how he/she knew how to survive in harsh weather. It’s amazing to me that they knew that animals could make leather clothing and shoes and how to hunt and how to eat the right things in order to live to create new generations." And for the next hour my brother went into an evolutionary theory that would make Darwin himself sit back and be proud. Among other things, he said that apes on Madagascar learned how to fish and it was possible that the fish oil helped to develop their brains. I never thought of fish oil.....

We talk about this stuff. We talk science, politics and the occasional Simpsons episode. My poor mom tries to interject, being that she is an incredibly smart and seasoned woman, but mostly we just go back to our heated discussion/arguement/rants which we believe only our super cool generation could possibly understand.

Today we talked about which parts of us are libertarian, socialist and democratic. We talked about the difference between libertarianism and true anarchy, socialism and communism...Matt had just printed out Obama’s speech he gave this morning which had many in tears. We talked about WHY we are voting for him as a democrat given the anger and frustration we have towards all the political parties. We basically decided it was because he really DOES give us hope. In our life times we’ve never had someone who inspired us so deeply and honestly.

I just thought I needed to blog about how cool my brother is. He has introduced me to so much: The Simpsons, The Young Ones, Real Punk Rock, The Blues, Good British Television, MST 3K, Star Wars and the ability to question everything I ever learned in high school history. No wonder that when I got to high school until this very day I’m still referred to as "Matt Vecchio’s Little Sister". Dude’s a legend. (Although I DO have to take credit for introducing him to The Rolling Stones. That one’s mine)

Thanks for being so kick ass, Matt!