What Big
Teeth You Have
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What Big
Teeth You Have
Excerpt from This American Life’s original podcast: Babysitting. Aired January 5, 2001. Host and Executive Producer: Ira Glass. Designed by Missy Quick Typeset in Scala Sans and ITC Officina Serif Created for Capstone: Form and Function November 5, 2015
Narrated by: Hillary Frank Featuring: Doug Peary Steve Peary Mike Peary
The Pearys grew up in rural Idaho. When their parents went out, the oldest son, Doug, was left in charge of his four younger siblings. Doug was the kind of guy who ruled the last three rows of the school bus through a combination of force and psychological pressure. He told other kids that the bus driver signed an agreement putting him in charge of the back of the bus. He wore a bomber jacket. He rode a motorcycle. Still, his parents thought he seemed responsible enough when it came to his brothers and sister. There was a lot they didn’t know.
If I had to be there tending these dang kids, I was going to make it fun for me too, you know?
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Doug often subjected his three little brothers to what he calls bravery tests. He would do things like stuff them in a sleeping bag and tie them to a tree limb, or snap huge rubber bands at their skin until they stopped flinching.
We had this iguana, this big lizard. It was about three feet long, and it died. Well, I was so attached to this thing that I, of course, just didn’t want to take it out and bury it. So I put it in the freezer and kept it. Well, this was a fun thing for all of us boys to take out of the freezer and thaw out and play with it. Then we’d put it back in the freezer and we’d freeze it again. After about a year and a half of this, we decided we needed a new bravery test. So we thought, what can we do?
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I think we should boil and eat the iguana. Honest to goodness, we ate some of that lizard. I even ate some. And they even ate some. It actually tasted kind of like sawdust.
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Doug did all the bravery tests he made his brothers do. But they were on their own when it came to one of Doug’s long-running babysitting pranks.
We were convinced for three or four years of our lives, I think, that he could actually turn into a werewolf. You’d hear this ahooo, and it would literally stop you in your tracks. And you just knew he was out there somewhere. We had a pasture in the back where they liked to sleep out. So this is a perfect place for me to stalk them in the night. I could hear them out there talking. I’d be sneaking up to the bushes and I’d go,
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ooooo Dead silence. Then I’d hear one of them go,
Doug’s a werewolf.
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The kids began to dread it whenever their parents went out. Until finally, it all came to a head one night. Mike was eight years old, the middle brothers were 11 and 13, Doug was 18.
We had a full moon, which was wonderful. And I kind of got to where the moon was silhouetting me. I stuck a bunch of weeds down in my glasses so they were poking out all around, and then I rose up out of the weed patch. I was totally growing hair, I was completely a werewolf. The best thing to do was to get out of our sleeping bags and run as fast as we could to the house.
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It literally was a situation where you were scared for your life. As we were running to the house, Doug was just sitting on the roof in a gargoyle position, and just staring at us, watching us. And so we just kind of slowly walked underneath him and ran into the house. Now I’m peeking in the windows, I’m rattling the doors, I’m trying to get in, and they’re running from door to door trying to lock all the doors up. I made sure that I just didn’t quite catch them. Just about the time they thought they were all safe...
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buhhhhh I snuck over and shut the breaker off to the house. And then all the sudden, the lights go out and it’s pitch dark in the house.
Get to the car. We got to get in the car and lock the doors.
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We realized that my brother Steve didn’t make it out of the house.
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I’m in the house alone. My fear went through the roof. And then I see him look in the patio window at me. He snuck into the house, and he saw my brother Steve just sitting on the couch. And Steve just said,
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I’m done.
Be done with this, however you want to end it.
I don’t care. Kill me if you want. 15
I don’t think we ever played it again after that point.
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These days, none of them carry resentment towards him, though when they were kids, clearly feelings were running a bit hotter. Around the same time Doug got into a motorcycle accident that nearly killed him. He broke every bone in his face, one arm, and one irreplaceable kneecap.
When I came home from the hospital, my brothers say, Mom, we’ll take Doug down the road in his wheelchair for a walk so he can have some air.
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They get me out on the highway and run as fast as they can and then let go. And I’m like,
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ahhhhhhh, going down the road, the wheelchair heading for the ditch. And just about the time I go in the ditch, they catch up to me and straighten me out and go again. So this was kind of a get even with me, they had great fun with me that time. I guess I was expecting a lot of sympathy and poor Doug. No, it wasn’t that at all. It was let’s get some revenge for all this time.
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When Doug had kids of his own, to his horror, his oldest son Cory turned out to be exactly the same kind of babysitter that Doug had been. Doug would come home from a night out and find himself pulling Cory aside and saying things like, Next time, try and tie the rope a little looser around your brother’s neck.
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Steve is also a parent these days, of four daughters.
I remember, this one time Doug came out with this box. And he said, look what I found out in the street. And we open this box and he had his finger sticking up through the bottom of the box so that all you could see was this bloody finger in there. I freaked out over that for years. I think back on it and I go, well, it’s kind of cool, actually, how he did it. So here I go, and I’m going to try it with my own kids. And I lift up the box, and my oldest daughter just broke into tears.I apologized all over myself for a week or two afterwards to her. I catch myself wanting to tease them, too. Like he did sometimes. In a fun sort of way. But my wife will go,
you know, you’re acting just like Doug.
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As an adult, Doug has gone to each of his younger brothers and apologized for how he treated them. But he also thinks if they’d been less aggressive with each other as kids, they wouldn’t be as close now.
I know family that has grown up more mellow than us. And they get along fine. And they’re very civil, and they’re very happy to see each other. But they’re almost like, when they see each other, they shake hands. And I’m like, give me a break. You haven’t seen your brother for six months? I mean, we’re grabbing each other and bear hugging, and we’re jumping up and down. It’s a whole different relationship, as far as I see. Like people who’ve been through traumatic experiences together. You feel like you’ve been through that and survived it all together, so it creates a deep bond or something, maybe. So I think we’re closer because of it, actually.
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If they’d do it all over again, they all say they would.
I loved my childhood. I look back on those years with complete fondness.
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