Yoyo Jojo

I was going to write about something else today and I changed my mind because me and my brother Joey hung out tonight and we haven't really done that in a while and I so enjoy just talking to him, he was my baby brother and now he's one of my best friends.
He's my youngest brother and I was 12 when he was born.

He was so funny from the time he could talk and I always got a kick out of him, the whole family did and he knew he had an audience. He used to call me Crisha and then Frisha as he couldn't pronounce the "Tr" in any words. Including the word "truck" so it was cruck for a while and then, well, you know what it was then.

We lived up the block from "rubber park" when Joey was little. I don't know the official name of the park but it was the park that John Travolta plays basketball in the movie "Saturday Night Fever". It got it's nickname "rubber park" from the rubber mats that were below the swings, seesaws, monkey bars. That park is also right below the Brooklyn-side entrance to the the Verrazano Bridge and when I would take Joey to the park he would say look at the trucks as he watched them getting onto the bridge. Well I was still a silly teen and I thought it was funny but I knew enough not to push him to say it. He even used to lisp a little and I would make him say "thister" and "thoup" time and time again but my mom told me to not do it even though it was so cute. She told me to ask him to say "sister" or "soup" and I would still get the laugh from the cute way he said it, but eventually he would learn the correct way to say the words.

When I was in the park, there were lots of kids there and if they heard Joey say "look at the trucks" they would ask him again and again, "Joey what do you see on the bridge" and by now Joey's caught on that somehow saying truck makes people laugh. I remember him sitting in his high chair and just saying truck and cracking us all up. My parents wanted to laugh too and probably did a few times but decided it would be best if we all just left the table if we couldn't hold our laughter in check. How could we make him stop saying truck, it's not like he was saying a bad word, he was just saying truck and for some reason it made everyone laugh.

One night we were all at dinner (the regular 9 of us plus my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Richie) and Joey started slamming his spoon on his highchair tray and he's saying "truck" over and over and over again. One by one we all left the table until this 2 year old is sitting in his highchair, all alone in the dining room, with a smug look on his face, knowing that he had some kind of power and was totally enjoying it.

He also could make our brother Michael so angry which in turn would make the rest of us laugh. Michael was about 18 and Joey 2 and everyone in the family was always fighting with Michael over something. He was a buster, and would antagonize all of us so someone was always saying "shut up Michael". Those words were probably Joey's first sentence, and that gave Joey his biggest laugh at the dinner table.

Michael would just say something like "pass the salt" and Joey in that little baby voice would just say "shut up Michael" and we would crack up and Michael, who could dish it but couldn't take it from a two year old, would be telling my mom to make him stop which would just make Joey say "shut up Michael" again and we would laugh even more and Michael would get so frustrated. I remember my mom laughing at Michael saying he's two years old, you're 18, just ignore him and Michael would be all mad saying he shouldn't be saying that anyway and there would come that little voice saying, "shut up Michael".

If you know Joey you love Joey. He makes you laugh and he has charm. When he went to get his first apartment he came home and told me the prospective landlady said he had charisma and asked me what did that mean. I told him what it mean and that she was right.

Now my baby brother is a man. He's a dad, one of the most awesome dads you could ever have. Yes I'm bragging. I'm proud of my brother, but not exaggerating. He's the real deal. (He learned from a great man but that's a story for another day).

I used to call him Yoyo Jojo when he was little and when I started making my fun little projects I made Joey a bunch of personalized yoyos. A fun toy to put in the gift bags at a kids party.
I just made a circle picture and laminated the picture and pasted it onto the yoyos. Kids love seeing their names or pictures on anything! And this is an easy project.