White Kong

At 6' 5" and 190 lean pounds, White Kong is not someone you want on your bad side. I am thinking about this as White Kong stands in the kitchen while loading two peanut butter sandwiches, 2 banananas, 5-6 assorted granola bars and rice krispy treat bars, along with two bagles and cream cheese into a now bulging plastic bag. This is lunch and breakfast. For some reason, White Kong is also not wearing a shirt and pauses momentarily to flex his gargantuan biceps. When he shoves the sandwhiches in the bags, the bags nearly burst from the force of his fists. He staggers across the kitchen, thud thud thud, and cranes his neck around the stairwell to yell into the basement:

"Muu thhhh er. Can you bring me up 3 waters and 2 gatorades, pulllleeeasssee!!!!" My mom is in the basement doing laundry. White Kong actually happens to be my 17 year old brother, believe it or not. An All American swimmer, White Kong is currently in his senior year of high school. He spends his days swimming, yawning through classes that bore him, and cruising to and from school and practice in a two door Ford Escort coup from the early nineties. When i drive in Kong's car I am afraid i am going to die. White Kong, however, lives on the edge, the edge of 17, if you will. After school and practice, White Kong does not spend much time studying or doing school work. He much prefers to spend his time gaming, recently mastering all of the expert level songs on Rock Band. Having mastered the bass and the guitar, White Kong now is working on his drumming maneuvers to Journey songs. 

As you might discern from the initial scene of this essay, in which White Kong makes sandwiches in the kitchen, that White Kong is not your average seventeen year old. Yes, he goes to school. However, in order to avoid utter boredom, White Kong has enrolled in every Advanced Placement Course possible. During math, because he has exhausted everything the public school curriculum has to offer, White Kong takes Calculus III online with Stanford. He really enjoys this course because he teaches himself, meaning he has plenty of spare time to play on his facebook account and play computer card games. 

On top of being a phenomenal athlete and complete brainiac, White Kong has the wit to match. Quick with a joke and in possession of an extremely sardonic sense of humor, Kong can jest with the best of them.  White Kong was not always so self possessed, however. He, too, went through his awkward teens where he refused to talk and picked at the patchy peach fuzz on his face. This, however, was before he became White Kong. 

I am not really sure where the name originated. During his childhood, we called him Snow Monkey, because he spent his his days at the pool, thus chlorinating his hair to a stark white and, with the help of the sun, he looked like a roma tomato in the face. His haircut also contributed to his resemblance to a monkey. However, as he grew and got stronger, he grew out of Snow Monkey. During this growth period, my brother also accrued an acute skill to dominate video games and swindle peers in basement poker matches. As White Kong began to grow into this swindly pre-teen body he began to encompass a very powerful persona. 

As White Kong' s love for cards, swimming, and games grew, he joined an online XBOX Live gaming community. To be part of this community, one had to submit a name. This, I believe, is where White Kong truly materialized. White Kong took the gaming community by force until my mother realized he was becoming a little too passionate about this cyber world and ended his subscription. However, by this time it was too late to deny the Snow Monkey's remarkable transformation into this formidable creature we know as White Kong. 

Whenever I fly home from Arizona, which is about 3 times  a year, White Kong seems to have grown in bicep and intellectual strength. His sense of humor is just increasingly sophisticated and he has turned into a young adult. When I accidentally signed into his email account, White Kong's friend had sent him an email with the subject line, "he's the study guide, you little twat". Seeing that White Kong now communicates with an adult sense of humor tears me up a little because it, apart from the fact that he looks like a body builder, is an indicator that, though he is my younger brother, he is no longer my little brother. 

White Kong is going to college next year, which is scary because in my world of denial I still consider myself, after having been out for 3 years, as a recent graduate. Everyday White Kong gets piles of renowned universities vying for his acceptance and bribing him scholarships and other assorted treats. Most of the letters, he shrugs while reading them and tosses them in the garbage. I did not have the same volume of Universities soliciting my attention. However, I cannot help but feel a sense of familial pride for White Kong's honors, awards, pool records, SAT scores, poker winnings and gaming domination. To top it off, it won't be so bad to be that-really-good- American- swimmer's sister at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.