1. One time he came up to the dining room window to show my mom that he had made two lizards into earrings. They were biting onto his ears. He had more trouble getting them to let go than he did getting them to hold on.
2. Oh, even better times involving looking out the dining room window (and I remember this very distinctly even though I was 3? you don't forget stuff like this), the time Jeff shot him in the head with an arrow (Jeff is my oldeST brother). In Jeff's defense, he had the arrow loaded and gave Darius very fair warning to get out of the way (Darius was standing in front of the target). Darius didn't move, so what other choice did Jeff have but to let the arrow fly? If I remember correctly, a lot of mom screaming ensued and a lot of neighborhood kids making a B-line out of our yard also happened.
3. Speaking of Darius and gaping wounds that require stitches, he's been to the hospital more times than any of us. And Jeff was usually involved.
4. Oh. UGH. Darius and I didn't get along until about high school. When we were little he would sing this song that made me so mad. It mostly consisted of him just calling me 'Baby Sandi' and I would scream that I wasn't a baby and then a fight would break out and this happened all too frequently. I'd like to follow this up with an apology to mom. Sorry mom! He definitely provoked me...
5. His back problems are due to over 20 years of skateboarding.
And did he allow a doctor telling him that he needed to stop, so as not to continue to have the back of an old man, to keep him from skating? No of course not. He's pretty good too.
6. He can watch almost any movie and have it memorized in the first viewing. It's truly an impressive and pointless skill.
7. This one time we went to Ireland and it took him about 30 minutes before he was okay making right turns in the middle of an intersection. It took me about 5 days to be okay with him driving on the wrong side of the road, and at that point we were leaving the country. Such is life...
8. Despite not really caring much for books, while growing up, he probably read 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' a good 50 times before starting high school.
9. I think he has yet to meet a white man with the same name as him? (I don't know why my mom picked the name Darius initially, but when grandma said that she wouldn't have a grandson named Darius, that pretty much sealed the deal and he had a name.)
10. One of my favorite Darius memories is the year he decided to be Santa, because money was a bit tight, and he bought all of our Christmas presents.
Underneath the scowl and all of the Darius-ness, he has a really big heart.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARIUS!!!!
This is us on a bus in Scotland. Wearing green because it was St. Patrick's day. You might be thinking 'What were you doing in Scotland on St. Patrick's day when you were just in Ireland?' At which point I would field the question to Darius who, as we were making our plans and booking planes and such for the trip, said "St. Patrick's day is a total American holiday, no one celebrates it over there." And at this point I would point out that as we were leaving Dublin, horribly early in the morning on March 17, 2010, to catch our flight to Edinburgh, they were setting up for the giant parade that we would be missing because NOBODY CELEBRATES ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN IRELAND.
This is very much younger Darius and Jeff. Cute right? I especially like Jeff's socks and Darius' cowboy boots.
And since Halloween is around the corner,
Darius was Mario, our friend Donny was Luigi. They won 'Best Couple.' I was Cyndi Lauper, I won 'Scariest Adult'... Holly was very obviously a burned piece of toast, I think she got 'Most Original?' And our nephew Josh, chewing on the witch there, was a pirate. He got 'Scariest Child.'
Basically we're an award-winning family.