"I Do Not Want a Police Enquiry" --- Please Sign Here

If there were a line you could call your signature line, a catchphrase or sentence you felt perfectly defined your life as it stood at that point in time, what would it be? Well, I can't say, for myself, but I definitely know what it is for my younger brother. The one line he has seen more often than his name, address or text-books in his first year of college. And no, despite what he might say to the contrary, it isn't 'Call Me' outlined in lipstick. When it isn't the last line of the release form he signs in the hospital before getting treated, its the last line of an application he signs to prevent his banged up vehicle from being towed: I do not want a police enquiry. The amount of 'enquiring' he has already saved the police, they should give him a reward or something. My brother gets into fights, road accidents or simply injures himself for no good reason. Actually, there are usually three reasons that suffice in his universe to explain these happenings: Bad Luck, Bad Luck, and Bad Luck. He'll just be sitting around minding his own business when some friend looking for 'friends' to go beat up someone will happen to catch sight of him - "what was i supposed to say, no?"; he'll just run across someone he don't particularly like when either they, or he, is in a bad mood; or he'll just be occupying the very corner of space someone suddenly has an impulse to push - nothing personal of course. And don't even get me started on the millions of ways in which the accidents are not his fault - this one time he calls me at two in the morning coz the car behind him, not the one he was in, has had an accident, and I say: 'were you drinking?' and he says: 'Of course not you idiot, we never drink in the car'!!! The first time I visited him while he was in college, he came to pick me up on a borrowed enfield wearing a cap - which was very unlike him considering how in love with his lovely locks he is, so of course i got suspicious and pulled it off to reveal: a bandaged head. So he tells me how he had to get nine stitches coz he was out on the landing and he jumped too high and banged his forehead on the ledge (which would be slightly hard to swallow even coming from a basketball player, except that I have seen him do this to himself before - he'll jump too high in joy or exhilaration, and Bam! I have to admit it takes a special kind of talent). So then we're riding the wrong way on one way streets (his solution is to speed up so he's doing it for a shorter period!) and breaking all kinds of traffic rules, so i say 'tell me honestly, was it an accident?' and he goes'No... though i did have this interesting accident a week ago' and displays the scrape on his elbow while giving me the details. After a while I ask him, "was it a fight then?' "No..." followed by a guilty reminiscent smile, " but i did beat up this guy a few days ago", and pointing to the bloodstain still on his knee: "That's his, I didn't get hurt, he was this puny senior who had been bugging me for a couple of weeks", fond chuckle. And then of course there are all those times on the court when he'll run into knee-high walls coz he didn't see them, or trip over someone else, or fall over a bench that 'isn't usually there' or... well you get the picture. Ok, as kids we were the ones with permanently scraped knees and elbows because, well its easy to get distracted when you're having a good time with such single-minded concentration, but one's got to grow out of it sometime right! Ok, maybe I'm just jealous coz I did while he still seems to be living in that simple world where everythings good and things happen to you inexplicably and you don't stop to question them because you don't want the magic in your world to up and leave. Or maybe I'm just worried about the levels of carelessness I now realize you cannot afford to enjoy in this world.