Bringing Up Uncle

I’ve always taken my uncling responsibilities seriously. Even before my little nephew was born, this much was clear to me: growing up, I didn’t have an elder male figure I could depend on to bail me out of trouble, or even to show me the ropes to basic adult stuff like shaving in a hurry or sleeping with women without falling in love with them, and this sort of deprival lasts a lifetime.  I would not let my nephew grow up a fuzzy-chinned romantic fool.

My approach to uncling my little niece however, is a little different. Having played easily manipulated filler middle sibling to the estrogen sandwich with extra cheese and evil that was my two sisters all through my blunder years, I was trained early on –despite the lack of formal education- to be terrified of all women under legal drinking age. It doesn’t help that my niece is the spitting image of her mother at the same age. What little niece wants, little niece gets.   

Having said that, I’m quite fond of this gig I have going as the niblings’ only maternal uncle, and the unofficial “fun uncle” by a mile. As my sis never tires of pointing out, mine is a kingdom founded entirely on the great institution of the uncle-in-transit. I’ve never lived in the same city, or even the same state as the niblings till I moved recently to Cochin, so I’ve never had to unplug the X-box just as the nephew was approaching his top score or take a U-turn and head right back into the city after a long day at work because I forgot to pick up glitter pens for the niece’s ‘art’ project. I come bearing gifts, and when I’m visiting no household item can not be converted into a plaything.  

So when my sister announced recently that she and her husband would be out of town for a  night, I jumped at the chance to re-write a little history. When Fun Uncle was on the throne, the niblings would look back and remember, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Not only would the fun never set on his empire, but the subjects would also eat their five greens with relish, shower without complaint and scoot off to bed in orderly fashion at quarter to ten. It was only a matter of a few hours before I would be inducted into the pantheon of all time greats- Uncles Bun, Charlie and …err.. Kracker.    

The first evening, a Sunday, passed uneventfully enough. I reached their place around five with a party-planner’s diary worth of things-to-do only to find that the agenda had not just been set, but that it was cast in stone: a trip to Donut Factory, followed by a visit to Crossword bookstore, both conveniently located almost across the road from each other in Panampilly Nagar where they stay. Fair enough, I thought, especially since my own game plan would have taken us on a criss-cross road trip across the heart and whatever soul is left of commerce-heavy Cochin.

The outdoor seating arrangement at Donut Factory did however tear a significant hole in my comfort zone. My nephew, who takes great pleasure in reading out- and consequently inquiring as to the meaning of- just about any road/shop/other sign he can find, pointed a questioning finger at the poster behind us: “A hole looks better on a donut than on your  lungs”. The words were accompanied by a picture of the universal circle around a cigarette with a line running across it. “It means you shouldn’t smoke,” I said, “because smoking pokes holes in your chest.” “But shouldn’t that be your choice?” he asked immediately, with all the privileged disdain for authority of his particular breed of Cochin’s private school populace.  

If they can sell cigarettes, and tax cigarettes, then of course it should be your choice, I wanted to tell him. Screw choice, smoking is just awesome, I wanted to say. But one look at his comically revolutionary face, and a quick flashback of him running circles around me in his Messi jersey as I lunged about gasping for breath during our impromptu football game a few minutes earlier, and I turned into my dad. “You’re seven,” I barked, “you have no choice.”

My niece plays games of a subtler kind. At Crossword bookstore a little later, after explaining to me the literary merits of the many numerous diaries maintained by a kid whodescribes himself as “wimpy” with a sense of irony I suspected was lost on her, she asked me: “So how much can I spend?” I quickly scanned the price tags on the shelf in front of me, and said: “you can both pick up a book each.” “No” she declared, “tell me how much we can spend, that’s what we always do.” As I tried to remember if I even understood the concept of spending power at her age, she added, “our other uncle always lets us spend five hundred each.” I nodded in the affirmative, and prayed to all the Gods I’d heard of that she didn’t grow up to be a politician or a banker.    

Of course the real test came the morning after. My niece woke me up at six to make her a poster for her campaign; she was running for Class Monitor and her pitch was “I will increase lunch hour by one hour”. “More glitter, dude,” she sighed exasperatedly every time she walked past in various stages of undress until the maid finally scooped her up and stationed her under the shower. I think she actually flicked my ear one time, but that may also have been my brain exploding. Only when the early morning wind did a little jig around my face as she waved goodbye from her bus did I fully realize the absurdity of the Goldingesque nightmare I had woken up to.       

My nephew had courteously decided to exit his royal chambers when I returned, at least physically if not in spirit. I walked in on the sight of the maid flying spoon-aeroplanes of sliced idlis into his open mouth as he stood in front of the television, his hand operating the video game console out of sheer muscular memory even as his head drooped to one side, his eyes tighter shut than Kerala’s shops on a hartal. The kid was half-naked and asleep on his feet as a middle-aged woman spoon-fed him breakfast, as the streets of some ghetto or the other rose up in flames on the TV screen to electronic punk rock! The world hadn’t witnessed such decadence since the Romans.

         

His eyes remained shut as I helped the maid plant one of his legs after the other into freshly ironed shorts, tucked in his shirt, converted the signature quiff of his hair into a side parting just to spite him a little and deposited him on the bus next to a cute girl who looked around his age. I made my way back to the flat in a daze. I must have dozed off on the couch because the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing in the vague vicinity of my ear. It was my sister. “You okay?” she asked. “Oh I really hope I can’t have kids,” I told her. “We’ll be back before noon,” she laughed. “You should,” I said, “they grow up so fast.”  

Icy Highs's Music Recco: Four Times and Once After - The Superfuzz/ Indigo Children

This piece was originally published in Helter Skelter magazine on 03-03-14

Riding In Cars With Boys

Few things intimidate me like the sight of a blank page. That probably sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect a writer to say. But that's not the sort of thing I'm talking about: I'm literally terrified of blank pages. I keep thinking they'll rise up from the spines of books and the backs of type writers and computer screens and swallow me whole or suffocate me to death. Kind of like a scary, literate and reluctant-to-show-it, Casper.

This means I scribble incessantly and compulsively on any blank sheet within my reach. That sounds rather grand but it doesn't have to be anything legible or even meaningful- an X or a pair of boobs will do. I go looking for canvas-of-life metaphors and deeper significance but my sister- who's a good 7 years older than I am, and quite the success story- narrowed it down to a more obvious (some might say "vicious"- ha, you've just been incepted!) possibility recently. She said- and I quote- "you've been babied by too many grown-ass women all your life. Go play with somebody half your age.".  

On the face of it, this may just be a little sibling rivalry at work (though best of friends we are) based on the Mothership's well-documented partiality towards me. Or maybe it was my trail of broken relationships- wonderful, kind, women who figured out sooner or later that they deserved better- and how badly I'd been dealing with my latest heartbreak. It may also have been the fact that it was 9 AM on a Sunday. I'd just dropped in at her's after a night out with some old friends, and was badly in need of coffee. She, on the other hand, had been up since 6, had brushed, showered and packed off the niblings to Abacus classes, prepared breakfast for the clan, and was getting dressed to go to church. The implication was clear: I needed to grow up and do a little babying of my own. Or maybe it was finding a doodle of our childhood Ambassador car -replete with big round headlights, and the registration plate- on Page 1 of a 145-page report she shad typed up over the weekend on "Why Grown Men Don't Grow The Fuck Up and Leave Home". I kid. The report was on something far less serious, something to do with intellectual property law. Unfortunately, the drawing had left an imprint on at least the next 60-odd pages.

"I'm sorry, Chech," I say, "I'll get it printed out again."
"It's not about the damn print outs," she tells me, "it's everything. This thing you're doing. You want more sugar?"
"No," I say, and gratefully accept the mug of coffee she offers. Tastes like home. And hangover.
"Look Chech," I try another tact, "why don't you head out, go to church if you must, and a movie or a spa or something after, and I'll pick up the kids and make sure things go smoothly here, what say?"
"Make this about me and I'll hang you by your toes," she says.
She's got her back to me but I can tell she's smiling.
"The kids finish at 10," she says, as I kick back on the couch and wave goodbye.

"GET OUT!"
"GET THE- go to your room- GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
Oh God, it's real. This is no nightmare, I've done something terrible. Again.
I wake up to see the niblings march their patented walk of reluctance to their rooms. They get in, leave their doors open just a tad, and settle in to watch. Further north of my eyeline is a familiar pair of hands on hips, and further up, a Very Pissed Off Chech. Scratch what I said about blank pages earlier; nothing intimidates me more than Very Pissed Off Chech.

"One thing," she says, "I didn't even ask you; you offered to pick up the kids. You couldn't do that for me."
"I passed out," I say, "I was exhausted. I'm sorry."
"Yeah well I'm sure sorry would have worked just fine if they'd been kidnapped too!"
"But they haven't been..." I stop, "I'm sorry. I'll leave."
As shameful as it is, this is an old trick. Offer to leave when I screw up, and she'd ask me to stay. Upsets the momentum of her fury.
"And don't come back till you've learnt to be responsible," she says, "I won't let you let my kids down too."

Sis safely fuming in her room, the niblings quietly make their way towards me.
"Hey guys," I say, "We were just playing a little joke."
"I'm ten next May," says my niece, "I can tell when a joke's not funny anymore."
I look up from tying my laces, and give her a hug.
"You stink," she tells me, "but don't go."
"I'm just going to give her some time," I say, "Sorry I didn't pick you guys up."
"It's ok," she says and goes back to her room.

"Hey buddy," I turn to my nephew and offer him a high five, "you've been a bit of a brat, haven't you?"
"I'm sorry," he says, and the severity of his apology, the solemnity of his voice, makes me want to kill whoever deemed it inappropriate to doodle on corporate documents.
"Hey, you draw pretty well," I tell him, "just not on anybody else's stuff ok?"
"Yeah," he promises, "I didn't realize."
"I know," I give him a stinky hug, "where'd you get the registration number? Nice detail on the front end too, great job."
"Mom's always talking about how Grandpa used to take you on roadtrips as kids," he says, "we just get driven to school."
"Hey, I had to walk to school," I tell him, "and we used to fight non-stop on those trips. And those trips only happened coz our Grandpa lived far away. We'd drive down to spend Christmas with him. You got your Grandpa right in your city!"
"I wish our whole family lived in different countries!" he declares, "except maybe you."
"Me too, Nephew," I say, "Get your shoes on. Let's go get you some drawing pencils."

   

Of Selfies And Cellphones. And 8-Year Olds.

 Mona Lisa had a bit of a reputation for selfies.   

See my little nephew and I, we're practically peas in a pod. The little guy is all me, it must be like genetic or something- and I don't mean manic depressive or creepily-silent-around-women. I mean the curiosity, the wonder, the non-stop questions, the frequency of hair gel-induced disasters: that's exactly what I was like at his age.

Whenever we get a little time together, he makes it a point to ask me the stuff they can't teach you at school, real life stuff- for a middle-class kid his age, it's like striking the mother-lode, if you know what I mean. Naturally, I was fully prepared for a week's worth of existential discourses of the adolescent kind when I got here last Tuesday. To my disappointment, the boy has been silent, reclusive, locked up in his room.

"I'm leaving in a few hours," I say, "Nothing you want to ask me, buddy?"
"There is this one thing," he says.

There's never only been one thing before. This must be huge. The meaning of life, or why hasn't Morgan Freeman recorded a Bible audiobook, yet?- something massive. 

"It's about selfies," he says, "Are you any good at selfies?"
My brain takes a couple of seconds to digest this information, and promptly denounce all bloody supply. I decide to clarify.
"And by selfie, you mean," I ask, "like a...self-administered...handy?"
"Way to dork things up," he says, "yeah, I guess. I just want to know if there's a recommended hand for maximum satisfaction."
Oh Karma, you son of a bitch. 

"Well, selfies are besties," I say, "the important thing is that you use your hand. And with practice...just how long have you been..selfing... yourself?"
"I owe it to you really," he says, "ever since you gave me your iPhone! I can upload my selfies in seconds."
Oh God. Oh God, I have turned my eight year old nephew into an inadvertent self-pornographer. 

"Ok, don't panic, Little Nephew," I say, "but you need to show me which sites they're on, ok?"
"Oh just on a Facebook group for like-minded selfie enthusiasts," he says, "I've put up so many I'm practically a legend to those guys."
No surprises, there. His physique must be genetic too, after all. 

"Hey, don't let anyone tell you it's the frequency that matters," I say, "you'll only set yourself up for a fall."
"Oh I know," he says, "it's not that. I go the extra mile, and these guys appreciate it. I accessorize, you know? Sometimes I clip on a moustache, or wear a wig, or hey I even plopped on your Aviators once."

Naturally, I had to take it up with his parents. I couldn't confiscate his phone, he'd hate me forever. And I sure as hell couldn't explain it to him, it'd be like gifting Adam his first fig leaf. I suppose his parents were afraid of the same thing. Which is why on my advice, we did the responsible, adult, decent, thing- in the middle of the night, like particularly clumsy cat-burglars; I think my brother-in-law actually sat on my little nephew's face for a split second- we stole his iPhone. His parents thought it best that I hold on to it. And assuming I have my way, that phone will never take a call again.

Reality Bites

Aunt H's bath salts did not suit Edvard's delicate constitution.  

A few days ago, while watching the news on TV with my Dad and nephew:


Nephew: "Please. Can we watch Cartoon Network? Pleeeaase?"
Me: "Sorry buddy. You know what Grandpa's like if he doesn't get his hourly news fix. Look, an explosion!"


Nephew: "Whoa! What is that?"
Me: "Oh, some terrorist somewhere basically strapped a bomb to his chest and then let it go off in the middle of the day in a shopping mall."


Nephew: "O.K. What was that?"
Me: "Pretty cool huh? It's called an earthquake. The earth just kind of starts shaking, like that building in Italy, see? The shakes get so bad, buildings start tumbling down."

Nephew: "Oh my God!"
Me: "I know, right? See, this happened in America. Some guys just started snacking on other people's faces."
Dad: "Zombies, all of them!"


Me: "Oh come on, Dad! Why do you always turn it off when the sports bit comes on?"
Dad: "I don't want your nephew to grow up thinking winning is everything. Sports is too competitive."
Nephew: "Yeah, I want to play a video game."
Dad: "No more video games for you. Too much violence."


Dad and I step out on the veranda to look at the moon, grunt at each other and say things like "looks like rain, oh she's 'bout to come down hard" though we know nothing about such matters. It helps us feel manly. That's when we hear the strains of the most terrifying music known to man.


We run back inside, but it's too late. The lights have been turned off, but the TV is on as we know only too well. The opening credits roll to a halt, and the screen is ablaze in the fiery reality of Junior MasterChef.


Looming out of the wasteland between couch and TV is the silhouette of what was once my little nephew, wielding remote control in hand. I stifle a 120 million dollar scream.


"Get the power drill," says Dad, "we have to finish him before he turns, or he'll infect the others."

 Icy Highs's Music Recco: "The Dope Show" from Mechanical Animals (1998), by Marilyn Manson 

  

Sins of the Father

Cucumbercalypse now 

There comes a time in everybody's life when you finally just shrug, shake your head and mutter, "I'm too old for this shit." As made famous by Danny Glover as Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon. And later, paid homage to by Ted in How I Met Your Mother. The idea being, once hit by this profound realization, you drop whatever time travelling device you're holding, and immediately start acting your age. That's right; step away from the Ed Hardy tee shirt rack, old man. There's no excuse for Ed Hardy tee shirts, not even on young people.

Unfortunately, my Dad didn't get the brief. What makes it more painful is that he's one of those people who were never that young to begin with. I don't mean he was boring; just that his interests were always more serious than other kids' Dads'. So while my friends dozed off in school after staying up all night watching the World Cup play offs with their Dads, I'd scribble furiously into my journal my impressions of Tolstoy and Dickens because they were the nominated topics of dinner conversation that week.

Since I moved back in, my Dad has asked thrice that I accompany him to the barber shop. I obliged once. Throughout his haircut, he made the barber stop repeatedly in the middle of his craft to ask me if he should maybe keep a portion long, or part it in a different way, or adopt a quiff. He once wondered aloud if the barber could do anything about the grey hairs on his body.

My Dad also decided that I would be his conduit to the E-niverse. In the last couple of months, I have introduced him to the computer, created his email account and set up a webcam so he can Skype with my sister's kids. He is still unable to fully grasp the concept of googling stuff -he thinks all things have allotted residences of their own on the web, and keeps asking me for the "address" for this and that. I think he's worried that it's somehow impolite to access a website through a search engine, and not directly by typing in the web address. I can't convince him that it's not the same as Uncle Chaz dropping in unannounced.

On the whole though, he has made steady progress. The other day, he asked me if he should change his shirt in preparation for a bout of Skyping with Legs Gracy, an old friend of my parents'. Legs had a bit of a reputation in their college for wearing short skirts. I figured any reason was good enough to rid him off the shirt he was wearing- it was fluorescent green and tight, and clung to his paunch like a drowning man to floatsam. He promptly strutted back in wearing a Che Guevera teeshirt and a beret. Mom spilled her coffee on my knee, but the court is yet to prove intentional harm.

Happy as I am to help Dad through whatever issues are leading him to buy CDs of One Direction -I haven't gotten round to teaching him about file sharing yet- I determined to save him and my niblings any embarrassment by warning them about his propensity to midlife. It was a phase, and it would probably be over soon, but it would do no harm for the niblings to be prepared. I survived the first one on my own; I would guide them through the second coming. I was Uncle Cool, and I would have The Chat with them. Their parents could thank me later.

"So what I'm basically saying," I say, "is that Grandpa might do things that embarrass you and make the other kids give you hurtful nicknames that scar you for life, but it's only because he's old and mental."

They look nonplussed. The poor things haven't grasped the seriousness of the situation. They don't know about "your Dad smells like old socks." They were born after the Sideburns, and the Vespa; long after the disappointment of the Seventies passing him by in his youth had been atoned for during mine in the Nineties.

"Guys, this is serious," I tell them, "he will reference movies that you should never admit you like. He will frame participation certificates from cricket camp in the living room. He will crush your spirit, and bulldoze your self-respect, but don't let him see you cry. Ok? Cry only when you're alone, not in front of him. Don't let him win."

My nephew looks up from his iPad. I'm finally getting through. "Rita says you embarrass her all the time," he says, pointing at his sister. I laugh. I'll let Rita take this one; tell the little fella he's mistaken. "It's not all the time," says a flushed little Rita.

My world comes tumbling down; folding in on itself. Their words echo off my eardrums as though from a great distance.

"Yesterday," says a voice that sounds a lot like my Rita's, "you liked your own status update on Facebook."
"Shelley's mother," says the voice, "told my teacher you send her strange texts at night."
"You lifted me up by the ankles in the car park and all the boys saw my underpants," says the voice.
Oh God, there's more. She's only getting warmed up. 
"You keep retweeting your own tweets," she says.
"And you're always cheating at Uno," adds a lower tenor.
Et tu, nephew? 

Later that evening at the barbershop, Dad and I are seated in adjacent chairs, hair being tended to while we watch the news.
"So what made you come with me to the hairdresser's?" my Dad wants to know.
""You promised to call it "barbershop"," I remonstrate, "and I needed a haircut."
"Right. Did you know," says Dad, "they have this thing where they put your feet in a tank full of fish that are trained to give you a footjob?"
"Don't gay this up," I tell him, "and it's called a pedicure."
"Sorry," he says, "can you hand me the remote? Sick of the news."
"Doesn't bother me," I say, "Can't see a damn thing with these cucumber slices over my eyes."


                                           Icy Highs's Video Recco: Rocky VI Training Scene

     

The Uncle Trap

Today's been a day of discoveries of EPIC proportions. Firstly, I found out that my niblings think I'm a human-sized rodent in a human suit. Secondly, a little less than five minutes ago, I discovered that there's a collective, gender-neutral term for 'the children of one's siblings': yup, it's NIBLINGS! Told you, epic stuff. Here's how it all went down.

As some of you may know, my nephew and niece are spending the summer at my parents' house. I beached up on their doorstep a little before my niblings did, entitled brat that I am, to pursue my lifelong ambition of gainful unemployment and partaking-of-free-meals. And the little business of writing. So far, so good.

Now much as I love my niblings, I don't particularly care for children. This leaves me in a love-hate existential conundrum whenever I spend more than five minutes with them. The initial burst of affection for my flesh and blood (in a manner of speaking) quickly gives way to the more familiar loathing of our pint-sized brethren, and their disdain for Adult words.

To be fair, their presence does not in any way affect my lifestyle as I spend my days locked up in my room any way, my fingers a whirl of type-and-delete. I only ever step out and interact with the rest of the world at mealtimes, and that too only to load my plate and haul it back to the mothership.

Of course, every so often I hear them chattering outside my door and go out and play the benevolent uncle: a game of hide and seek, or maybe a drive to the pastry shop in town. But these occasions are utilitarian -they have a defined purpose- and therefore exert no conversational stress on any of the parties involved.

Little did I know that my niblings were quite taken by these spontaneous visits of mine to their world, and had asked Mom how best to coax me out more often. Neither did I know that they had taken her throwaway remark rather seriously, and decided to act on it.

So I open my door this afternoon, and find a big bowl of melted ice cream, a cherry and a chocolate wafer floating in the mess, and two pairs of eyes watching my every move from behind the couch. I walk past them, casual as a cucumber, push one end of the couch into the wall with a Bournesque flourish, and demand an explanation.

They crack like eggs. They sell the other down the river in their desperation for lenience but they're both guilty as sin, the jittery juveniles. They even try to take Mom down with them. As it turns out, she had told them- in jest no doubt- that their uncle would only ever be tempted out of his room by the promise of a good meal.

This little nugget of wisdom, coupled with their experience of setting mousetraps in the storeroom with my Dad last week, had somehow snowballed into the masterplan to leave a bowl of ice cream under my door to lure me out, like a common rodent. Presumably, they intended to pop a bucket over my head once I was suitably distracted.  

                                          Icy Highs's Video Recco

                                    'The Mouse Trap' scene from Tom and Jerry








      

Extremely loud and indelibly close

It has now been a little less than a month since I upped and left my Old Life, and re-joined the Fam. This is easily the longest I have spent with them since the Summer of Love & Detox, 2005, which was a recuperative stint post-rehab and probably doesn't count. In other words, this is the longest I have spent with my family without compulsion -or a padlock on my door- since I finished school in 2002. That was ten years ago, back when Facebook was still a gritty little chromosome in Satan's ballsack, cheering on Zuckerberg's synchronized swimmers from the stands.

I left home before my nephew and niece were born, and though we've always been in touch, we have never really spent more than a few hours together in the same room. Which is why I jumped at the chance to take responsibility for their conveyance from their home to that of my parents for their summer break. Summer-at- grandparents' is a family tradition, and plays motif to my favorite childhood memories. My cousins are all grown up and too busy now to spend an entire summer in front of TV or playing cricket under rubber trees like we used to, but growing up together -if every summer- helped create a bond that will only be nourished by age.

Many summers ago at Vagamon, Kerala with the gang

With my younger sibling soon expecting her first-born, I want to ensure these kids have something similar to look back on when they're fucked up and miserable in their late twenties. It helps. I diligently planned the twelve hour drive, penciling in educational, recreational, nutritional and excremental pit-stops. I loaded universal favorites on the MP3 player - surely, even Noughties kids would appreciate the possibly-racist but undeniably lovable durability of Sweet Home Alabama?  This was going to be our Memory; this was how they would remember their coolest uncle after his promising writing career was stopped short by alcoholism and too much hour-long nookie. Or got run over by a scooter while crossing the road from his security job at the mall.

Over the Easter weekend, I came to realize that my sister had talked me up over the years into an almost magical figure of superhero-like abilities to entertain kids. My nephew and niece had endured several hours of toilet-training, teeth-pulling, math classes and violin lessons to please their walking fun-fest of an uncle, and were -surprise!- rewarded with bicycles and skateboards and doll houses. Though they were a little disappointed that I arrived and left while they were asleep every time, they were no less thankful- and expectant of more super-fun times.

Now I'm no expert but children are not terribly reasonable creatures. I was therefore prepared to hit a few rough patches on the way, confident that we would prevail with a little compromise and understanding. What I hadn't steeled myself for was the weight of their expectations. You've never really let someone down till you let down an 8-year old. They're not very adult about this either - they don't swear and punch walls like ex- girlfriends or parents. They just accept it, albeit with a little initial reluctance. When they finally come to grips with the fact that Uncle Cool is in fact quite boring and doesn't really have that many interesting stories to tell, they just go: "oh, well." They shrug it off. They have no time or patience for disappointment.

It drives me mad. I first noticed it around a quarter of the way in. I had just confirmed to my nephew -for the third time- that Uncle Cool could neither fly our Toyota nor grow a crazy beard and populate it with bees like the freak from that program on some channel. Call me petty but this speech was met with such utter disbelief both the previous times that I was almost beginning to believe that I probably could do one of those things if I set my mind to it. I mean how hard can it be to fly a car? I waited for their pleas to try, their chants of "liar, liar!" Nothing. So I look at them in the rearview, and that's when it happens. The elder one-my niece- shrugs. It works like a slow-motion electric current. I watch her indifference move steadily from the tilt of her shoulder to the tip of my nephew's fingers in one steady flow. And suddenly, it's over. They're both staring out the window, content to gaze at cars and people rushing by as I drive them home.

I'm incensed. Not by how easily they give up the ghost of my legend, but how callously they deal with it's passing. They have just found out the truth about a man who got them through measles and exams and a junior karate championship. They have just found out that he may well have had nowt to do with them, that they may have scaled those peaks on their own. Where's the epiphany, the drama? What kind of robotic beings refute the allure of crushing disappointment, and choose instead to be strong and carry on? Cowards!

We drive in silence. My musical sensibilities have long since been decreed intolerable. I decide to never have children, constituted as they are of such fickle moral fibre. The kids know too that something is wrong. The mood is tense. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see my nephew wipe a tear from his eye. It could have been a speck of dust, or those dastardly Doritos he's been munching on all day, but adults need their legends too and I'm sticking with mine. A tear it was. We gallop over a speedbump that escaped my attention, and he lets out a smelly, resounding fart. It's potent to the point of suffocation, and we lower the windows before we even laugh. The sounds and the sights and the wind and the sun all rush in, and we're all alright with the world again, extremely loud, and incredibly, indelibly close.  

               (My absolute favorite summer song. Here comes the sun, Abbey Road - The Beatles.)