Creative Nonfiction class, final submission, rough draft:
It’s Good To Be Uncle Joe
I love being an uncle to my nieces and nephews. Is there anything more satisfying than returning a totaled Big Wheel to service with nothing more than a piece of wood, some screws, epoxy, and a flair for hand tools? As my four-year-old nephew Silas raced around the basement, the delighted grin on his face was all the payment I received but it was more than enough.
When my wife and I visit her sister Syd, Silas’s mother, Silas and I usually have a “swordfight” in the kitchen which interrupts the women’s conversation and usually results in a tear or two being shed from the inevitable misplaced whack on the hand or head. I try not to cry too hard, but when the foam pad covering the plastic core of the sword slips off, it stings a bit. But that gets to the essence of being guys. We like aggression and competition and the occasional resultant bloody nose or skinned knee seems like fair payment. This is often difficult for females to understand, especially those unaccustomed to normal boy behavior.
My sister-in-law is one of those people. The youngest of four girls, she is also the only lesbian on my wife’s side of the family. Silas was conceived with the help of a turkey baster, a sperm donor and meticulous ovulation timing. Despite the macho law enforcement career of my sister-in-laws partner, there just isn’t any other testosterone in that household. Silas is an only child as he seems likely to remain.
His thirst for testosterone release seems unquenchable. When I walk through their door, the women become oblivious as he gloms onto me for chasing, scaring, tickling, noogies and wrestling. And of course the infamous “claw”, where I gently dig my fingers into Silas’s abdomen and growl menacingly. My older brothers did this to me; I’m obligated to pass it on.
Syd pays corner-of-the-eye attention to us and seems to have a kind of clinical detachment. It’s like she read a book on raising boys and the author told her it’s O.K, even normal, for us to behave this way. From her blind, Jane Goodall takes notes on the strange and fascinating behavior of apes in the jungle.
I’ve been accused of playing too rough or being too strict with the kids, the latter accusation coming from my beloved mother-in-law and directed at my wife and me. My response is a simple question. If we are too strict, why do the kids return to our home when invited? As kids, my adult niece and nephew voted with their feet every single time in our favor. My niece is raising her children in the same manner, love brooking no backtalk, in which she was raised. Her children are polite, smart and well adjusted. I’d like to believe the success of my nephew, an honorably discharged Marine Corp Corporal and honor college student, was at least partially due to the spanking I administered twenty years ago while on vacation in Florida.
My wife and I are subject to allegations of cluelessness because we are childless by choice. According to this flawed ad hominem circumstantial logic, only those having children are capable of knowing how to raise them. Hogwash. I don’t need to have a child to know if yours is a brat or to know the solution for bratty behavior.
Speaking of bratty behavior, our friends Cathy and Jason have two boys, Cole, 6, and Nate, 4. The summer before last, Nate was standing on the rear steps of their house and was obviously contemplating kicking over a cup of milk on the step below. His dad told him not to do it. He looked at his dad, looked at me, smiled, and kicked over the milk.
Picture the space shuttle launch where the rockets are ablaze but the shuttle seems to be barely moving. That is how Uncle Joe came out of his chair, on his way to apply his hand to a butt fifty years his junior. Fortunately for Nate, his mother saw the cup kick, saw Uncle Joe’s lift-off and intervened with a time-out.
Cole is much more reserved than his brother and according to what he told his parents, is the only child to accuse me of playing too rough although he admitted he “kinda likes it.” We host Cole’s birthday party every July. Cole, Nate, their friends Theo and Zak, and Silas attended last summer along with Marine Corporal Andrew Smith and yours truly. With Andrew and I manning the squirt guns in the water at our beach out back, it’s testosterone heaven. If you’re under the umbrella or a girl or both, you are exempt. Mostly. There is no sweeter sound than the shriek of a female having oiled summer skin unexpectedly saturated by a blast of cool lake water from twenty feet away. An exquisite female “ewww” of disgust at a gross-out is a close second.
My sister, the childless lesbian on my side of the family, apparently agrees with Cole after watching Silas and me at a recent holiday dinner. There were ten of us at the restaurant and of course Silas insisted on sitting next to his Uncle Joe. Keeping a five-year-old entertained without utilizing a Big Wheel combined with the other constraints imposed by proper public behavior isn’t as easy as it sounds, particularly under the influence of several margaritas (me, not Silas). Fortunately, Syd had brought some stickers and we amused ourselves by placing them on the foreheads of tablemates and each other. We placed sliced lime rinds over our teeth, smiled and had our picture taken together. Silas dropped his Silly Putty into my shirt pocket and squished it against my chest. It didn’t stick to my jeans, so I thought it wouldn’t stick to my shirt. Wrong.
My sister didn’t like my talking Silas into taking a bite of a Jalapeno pepper. Even though it wasn’t raw or excessively hot it was funny; even Silas thought so. What did she think the lime was for? My wife made me wash his hands in case he inadvertently touched his eyes. What really sent my sister over the edge however, was when I dabbled some ice cream on Silas’s cheek. I was going for the tip of his nose but missed. He laughed it off as I wiped it, but my sister rose from her chair in a huff. What kind of thing is that to teach a boy? What if he did it at school? Chill, girl. Sure, someone could get an eye poked with ice cream/ Jalapeno finger. That’s how we roll.
Others have reviewed my uncle suitability and have not found me wanting. A local non-profit agency that matches mentors with boys did a thorough background check on me over a year ago and I’ve been mentoring an eleven-year-old boy successfully ever since. We’ve done everything from watching movies to snowboarding, but I find most of the mentoring happening in the car on the way home when we are uninterrupted. I’d take him to the pistol range for some real fun, but the program rules don’t allow it. I may appeal.
Joe