VH1's Behind the Music series is essentially based on the fact that people are not generally prepared to be famous. But this story isn't about my brother — he seems to be dealing well with his growing fame. No, I was the one who wasn't prepared for it.
My brother started his blog in earnest earlier this year. As a devoted sister, I bookmarked the site and read every post. He took pains to introduce himself as "Disco" and ingratiate himself to his readers. From the beginning, because the blog was supposed to be about the life of a baseball player, he introduced his wife and assigned her the moniker "Mrs. Disco." Disco and Mrs. Disco are the principal players in his stories. Every once in a while he would mention me, or my mom, and we'd get excited for our little moment in the sun.
I started to anticipate how he would flesh out the world of his blog — the "Discoverse," one might say. At one point I wrote him a tongue-in-cheek fan mail letter. When he responded, I sent what I thought was a hilarious reply to the response. I thought the sibling relationship, enhanced through the format of a fan-mail war, would be an amusing thread to follow. He politely declined to take me up on my challenge.
For some reason, I wanted to choose my own character name (although there wasn't exactly competition in this arena). I wrote a post on spec explaining what it's like to be the sister of a celebrated baseball player and all-around brilliant human specimen. As a testament to the many years I've been known as "Chris's sister," I decided on the self-deprecating name of Christer.
It took me way too long to figure out that the joke — Disco so eclipses his sister that she has no name of her own — doesn't work. I finally realized the real irony: not even Christer, the lowly half-wit loser, exists in the Discoverse. Sometimes I'm useful to make a joke, but it's always a brief "my sister," and I don't have any characteristics of my own.
I love my brother, Chris, and I'm proud of him and his success. Frankly, I can't explain why I expected to be a bigger part of it. He has a good, strong brand that consists just of him and his wife, and it's working for him and his readers. I don't resent his vision of the Disco story, but sometimes it's hard to read the amalgamation of his life that appears so complete without me in it.
The blog name Christer was taken.