The first one

My brother is sitting in some redneck podunk jail, facing 5 felony counts, including holding a cop hostage.  With a loaded gun.

B is bipolar and a sociopath.  Granted, i have no idea if legally he's labeled a sociopath (yet), but he is.  He's 2 years older than me, i know these things.  About 20 years ago, in his mid-twenties, he started trying to kill himself.  He's such a fuckin failure.  Over the years since then, he's pretty much tried halfheartedly at least once a year.  And he's also been married 4 or 5 times and has 4 kids with 4 different women (i'm bettin there's more kids out there, all of them carrying his fucked up genes).

i haven't spoken to B in years...maybe close to 10?  The last conversation included him telling me about how he got a hard-on when his preschool aged step-child sat in his lap.  i left that lunch and called my mama from the car. Yes, she knew about it, but B said that he wouldn't "do anything", so it's okay. i had to trick her into telling me B's address so that i could give as much information as possible to CPS.  Not sure of the full outcome, but i do know he was ordered to stay away from the child, so the child was sent to live with relatives cause B had to have a bed to sleep in so he could go to work every morning, so he wasn't about to move out, dang it.

He once held his own son hostage when A was a baby.  It involved a 6-hour stand-off with the police, and him shooting a gun through the ceiling.  He was given the choice of jail or mental hospital.  He chose the state hospital.

Our mama lets him manipulate her, and is verbally abusive to her.  She takes his shit...he convinced her he was the way he is because of how she raised us, so she's trying like hell to pay that debt.

Because i decided to separate myself from him, i also had to separate myself from her as well.  They are most definitely a package deal.

i haven't spoken to her in about 8 years.  It was amazing, the absolute ugly dead mental weight that i let go of after that.  It saved my life, i'm sure.

So anyway, during his latest halfhearted attempt at killing himself, a cop got close enough for B to grab him and hold a gun to the cop's temple.  It's too bad the other cops didn't shoot him.