Doug – The Competitor

Doug was born on August 15th, 1957. A year and 5 months after me. We were so close that we literally grew up together as brothers, friends, and competitors. In my younger years I don’t remember a time that he wasn’t around. We both loved the outdoors and sports. Where I loved football, Doug’s passion was baseball. With these to loves we spent all our time it seemed outside playing both of these sports Any sport Where quickness and coordination was required, Doug would kick my butt. It was only in sports where strength was important did I ever outshine him.
Doug was just one year behind me in school and I think he grew tired of being my little brother, Even though there were 3 kids younger than him, they were far enough back that they really didn’t count. It’s funny but all through school we never hung out together. The few times I remember interacting with him were sort of memorable.
The first time was in elementary school where Doug was playing basketball with his friends. Somebody missed a shot and the ball rolled off the court where it was picked up by one of the other kids. Doug walked over and asked for the ball back and was told no So Doug asked again. And was told no again. Well I was standing near by and Doug yelled at me to help. So I walked over and asked the kid to give the ball back and he told me no. So then I punched him in the stomach and he bent over I hit him in the back of the head. Down he went and the ball rolled free. Doug was able to pick it up and return to the game. I wasn’t so lucky. I guess elementary school students aren’t supposed to fight, although I am sure I pointed out that in fact that there was no fight as I had laid the kid out pretty quickly. Didn’t matter I was allowed to pass the rest of the recess standing “on the line” until the school bell rung sending us back to class.
The next instance I was in middle school and Doug was still attending elementary school. I was walking home from school one day when a group of punks that were older than me stopped me and tried to pick a fight. Being smart enough to know that odd of 3 to 1 were not in my favor, I refused and then turned my back on them and continued walking. Well this seemed to irritate the two oldest ones (older than me even) so they had their sidekick who was still in elementary school proceed to kick me in the butt as I walked away. He did this multiple times. After a while it really did begin to hurt. By the time I made it home, I was in tears. So that evening I had a talk with Doug and asked him to do me a favor when he went to school the next day and have a word with the kid that had been kicking me. Doug said he would and did, the end result being that he spent some time “on the line”
Around this same time our neighbors son, John Mullins, who was Doug’s age and a friend(?). For some reason ended up hurting Doug over something stupid. It made me mad because, even though they were the same age John was big and tall and probably outweighed Doug by almost a hundred pounds. Well my brother was hurt and I found that unacceptable so I went over to their house and on their front yard, beat the crap out of him, even though he outweighed me by about the same amount, I was definitely a lot meaner. So his mom went and told my mom and I got banished to the backyard for a few days, again. As a matter of fact I think I can safely say that Doug and I spent equal parts of our youth in the front yard (not in trouble) and back yard (in trouble)
Our high school years were nothing special. With just a few highlights. First was the Tennis team. Doug of course made Varsity as a singles player, he was pretty good. I on the other hand, let’s just say I balanced it out, so I was on the JV doubles team. The only spot lower was ball boy. As one of the better players the coach, Mr. McIntosh, spent a considerable amount of time with Doug and the other varsity players getting them ready for our matches. Us lowly JV, especially the doubles players, were relegated to spending most of our time out on the handball courts hitting balls against the wall. That’s at least what we were told to do. I on the other hand had a better plan. I use to take as many tennis balls as I could gather and then spend my time on the handball courts pursuing more productive endeavors. My partner and I would take turns seeing who could hit the tennis coach with a tennis balled lobbed over the fence.

The other special highlight in high school was the trigonometry class that we shared. Doug was always a hard worker, he took his books home , studied for the tests, turned in homework when required. In other words, he did everything he possibly could to get that ‘A’. I on the other hand took my textbook out of my locker only to take to class. I was the complete antithesis of Doug. So when the final grades came out, Doug was proud that he had managed to get a ‘B’ in such a difficult class and then I showed him my grade, an ‘A’. He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

After college we both went our separate ways, I went to Santa Ana Community College and then Fullerton. Doug went straight to La Verne for his accounting degree. It was here where discovered I could be jealous and irritated at my brother at the same time. Doug was getting to enjoy the true college experience and live in a dorm, make friends, and had a place to take girls to, and he did!! And then, I had to drive up there almost every week to pick Doug up and drive him home for the weekend so he could go to his job at Disneyland. And then on Sundays drive him back to school. And of course Doug never missed the chance to tell me about his College activities. Which is funny as I don’t remember him ever talking about classes.

While at La Verne, my brother the budding entrepreneur decided that he was going to stage a skill-gimmick car rally.  Which turned into a hilarious disaster for Doug. Doug had diligently planned out the route on a map so he could figure the route, the spots for checkpoints and what the trick questions would be to help determine the reader And as usual Doug was extremely diligent in planning the route on the map. Unfortunately, the map and reality weren’t exactly the same . It turned out that one of the streets he was planning to use didn’t go over the rail road tracks like it showed on the map. So everyone following the route would have been stuck with no way to complete the race!! Needless to say Doug’s rally died a quick and ugly death.

I will continue to add more as time goes by. Doug led a full and marvelous life, I miss him and feel lucky that we were able to reconnect a bit before he passed.