On
the cusp of the release of Scene in Fond du Lac, I was among
the dozen or so contributors treated to dinner at a local restaurant
that used to be a church. I made some humorous observations at our
table and sipped from two free beers until someone noted that I was
the only one in the group who had yet to reproduce. If memory serves,
my reply was, “Well...that makes me feel a little sad.”
It
wasn't much of a zinger, I must admit. I was lucky I didn't get booed.
On the drive home, I smacked my fist against the steering wheel, for
a solid retort at last had occurred to me. It was too late to seem as
quick-witted as I had hoped, but I realized I should have said,
“Hey...I'm satisfied with just being an uncle.”
Hindsight
can be such a drag, but in order to redeem that mishap, I have
composed some endearing anecdotes about my nephew. (In fairness, I'm
a level-2 uncle, but my niece is still progressing through that
infantile stage where you feel an undercurrent of worry about her
well-being at all times since four-month-olds don't understand much
about the survival racket.)
My
nephew incurs slightly less anxiety, however, inasmuch as he's old
enough to communicate his thoughts, and we don't have to fret about
him potentially gulping down Lego blocks anymore.
When
my nephew became old enough to perform the small-scale basics of
sports, my dad was abundantly pleased when I bought the boy a tee
ball set. The little one had taken to bopping the occasional line
drive and then gleefully running a diamond-like path. Having
retrieved the ball, my dad would trail a step behind him, reaching
but never quite able to tag him out. It was always a bang-bang play
at the plate but the boy would inevitably score another home run.
“Safe!”
my dad declared. “He's safe again!”
I
love the unselfishness kids instill in us. We prefer to lose so that
they may win. We'll
look like hapless fools so that they may feel happy and safe.
I
once watched my nephew during batting practice, shortly after he had
(crudely) learned how to count. With a grin of endless enthusiasm, he
stood beside the tee ball stand and announced, “One...Two...THREE!”
With that he swung and missed the motionless ball, but recomposed his
stance, undeterred. “Three...Six...EIGHT!”
DONK!
On this try he connected with a towering shot to the base of the
neighbor's chain link fence. At the expense of his math skills,
perhaps, I advised him to keep the “three-six-eight” countdown
since baseball inspires strange superstitions.
Later
that day he sat in front of me on the grass a few feet behind my dad,
who had agreed to club home runs over the roof of my parents' ranch
style home. My dad lobbed the tee ball into the air a few times, appraising it, and then set his stance, miniature plastic bat in hand,
poised to start his one-man derby.
“We've
got the best seats in the house,” I said to my nephew.
He
looked back at me, puzzled, and then corrected me.
“No,
no, no,” the boy said. “He gonna hit the ball OVER the house.”
Maybe he had misunderstood me, but I couldn't argue with his basic logic.
Playing my old Super Nintendo beside my nephew is another joy. He learned the preparatory method of blowing dust out of the cartridges in no time, and when a game's title screen blips disobediently, he is quick to quote the explanation I gave him months ago.
“It's
slow to work. We played this game a lot a long time ago when we were
boys.”
On
the second or third try, when The Adventures of Batman and Robin
complies, we high-five each other and retreat back to the couch. I
give him the second controller that doesn't actually serve a purpose
in this particular game, but he is content to mash buttons as I
occasionally call him a “good helper.”
We
advanced to part in which Batman must destroy huge robotic chess
pieces on a sprawling chessboard.
“What's
chess?” he wanted to know.
I
paused the game, sought the lightly dusted board game collection in
my parents' basement, and returned with a worn cardboard box with a
chess game inside.
The
boy's instantaneous instinct, of course, was to dump the contents
onto the carpet. Thirty-two small pieces of plastic rained down and
scattered. He shook once more and the board plummeted to the floor.
“What's
this?” he asked of the first piece he grabbed.
“That's
called a rook,” I explained. “It looks like a castle, but for
some reason, they gave it a fancy name.”
“What's
this?”
In
a minute's time, I had covered the entire roster of chess pieces. My
nephew still wasn't satisfied. He squinted quizzically at me.
“Which
one is Batman?”
My
snickers filled the room but he never joined me. The boy was becoming
a great deadpan comedian without realizing it. Eventually I picked
up a dark knight and told him it was Batman.
A
week afterward, in the kitchen, with my mom and I flanking him at the
kitchen table, he handed out blank sheets of paper and told us we
were going to draw pictures. He then overturned a ceramic vase filled
with colored pencils, which—to him—made more sense than keeping
the pencils neatly arranged in the container.
“Ga'ma,”
he addressed my mom. “You draw an Applebee's. Uncle Nick, you draw
a bank. And I'm gonna draw...” here he paused, stretching the
suspense and straining his imagination until his mind found
serendipity. “ANOTHER Applebee's.”
We
pressed our colored pencils against blank canvases. I designed a
box-shaped building that could have passed for a low income house
were it not for a sign that read “Bank.” The little one made
another request.
“Uncle
Nick, draw Scarecrow outside the bank.”
This
seemed peculiar since scarecrows, quite unlike banks, tend to be
found in cornfields.
“You
want me to draw a scarecrow...outside of a bank?”
“Yeah,
Scarecrow. The Batman bad guy,” he clarified.
This
was another reference to The Adventures of Batman and Robin. A
fear-mongering villain named the Scarecrow menaces the sixth level by
robbing a bank. I snickered at the boy's expanding memory and
attention to detail, but he was businesslike and intent on producing
an Applebee's that looked more like a supernova than a restaurant.
The
last of these nephew stories began with an error in judgment at Pick
'n' Save, wherein a few of those glass-encased claw machines entice
kids beside the entryway. While the two of us watched the Game Show
Network, the boy asked me a question.
“What's The Walking Dead?”
I
cringed. There was a downside to the three-year-old's adeptness at
working the claw machine lever. Rather than Dorah or Curious George,
he had extracted a cushy action figure of a character from AMC's
drama about the zombie apocalypse.
“Well,
it's a TV show about a make-believe world where people have to fight
monsters.”
“Bad
monsters?” he asked.
“Yes,
like the ones responsible for installing the claw machine at Pick 'n'
Save.”
“What
do the monsters do that's bad?”
“They
let kids your age get Walking Dead
toys.”
“No,
no, no,” he persisted. “The OTHER monsters.”
I
envisioned the end of the second season and the cruel fate of a blond
woman as she fled a farmhouse being overrun by senseless malice in
human form and contemplated the best way to convey that to my
2011-born nephew.
“Before
I answer that...” I started, stalling as I reached into my pocket.
“Maybe you'd rather play Pac-Man Dash
on my iPhone!”
“Pac-Man
to the rescue!” the boy exclaimed.
