I have a brother who lives in California for some reason. He doesn’t seem any happier about it than the rest of us, so he recently spent some time visiting Texas.

“We have to make him earn it,” Thomas Jefferson Rusk explained to the Lord.

The Lord called in a snowstorm to strand my brother in Flagstaff, Arizona for two days.

Once he continued on his way, he elected to stop off for a 72 ounce steak as he passed through Amarillo. More accurately, he ate a more reasonably sized steak and texted me to let me know someone else had taken the challenge.

The founders of YouTube clearly envisioned providing the world with the ability to watch their fellow man eat giant steaks. No one would argue that, so I dialed up the Big Texan YouTube channel and started watching with associates.

“Look at him, there, poking around on his phone,” we discussed. “That’s disrespectful to the steak.”

You can see the band in the background trying to get the audience excited, but the gentleman went on disrespect the steak further.

“It’s a little dry,” he really did say.

“Have your brother stand up and yell, ‘Go back to California!'” an associate suggested, knowing full well my brother was coming from California himself.

I texted my brother, and he responded they were actually locals.

“They’re just saying that to save face,” I replied.

After he tapped, out, my brother says the gentleman continued complaining about the chewiness when he came back to the table.

It’s a bad competitor who blames his equipment. In Texas, we don’t make excuses. If you try something and fail, you can learn from the experience to be better next time. Did William Travis blame the Alamo?

“What is this, limestone?! How are we supposed to reinforce limestone?!” he could have cried out.

Instead, he stood his ground, defending against two attacks by the Mexican army which weighed, I suspect, substantially more than 72 ounces before falling in the third attack.

When my brother got to Fort Worth, I ordered a line of thunderstorms as a welcome. I took him on a ride-along to illustrate how reporters drive through severe weather so we can accurately tell the listener how dangerous it is and how you should not be out driving in severe weather.

For some reason, he seemed less interested in participating in my work after that, so during my shift the next couple of days, he busied himself at some of North Texas’ tourist destinations.

When I got home one afternoon, I noticed he had adjusted my refrigerator magnets. I’m not sure why he felt a 2023 Frisco Roughriders schedule was more relevant than a 2014 Texas Rangers schedule.

My refrigerator is a rich tapestry of baseball history. Sure, there’s a chance it’s less comprehensive than Cooperstown, but you know how sometimes you wake up and sit bolt-upright in bed wondering who the Seattle Mariners were playing on August 15, 2007? I just have to head into the kitchen, get a glass of water to settle my nerves and look at the refrigerator to find it was the Minnesota Twins.

Perhaps the steak gentleman will learn. Perhaps someday he’ll return to the Big Texan and instead of scrolling through his phone and blaming the steak, he’ll emerge victorious in just 18 minutes and be able to declare his independence from the steak.