At my father’s suggestion, I’ve gotten in the habit of sending my grandmother an email every week. The fact of the matter is, I am not very close to my grandmother so I haven’t been very admirable about corresponding with her. But she is increasingly sick and has reached a point where she can’t even read or watch TV because her eyes are too weak. So I email updates on my life to my aunt, who prints them out and reads them to her.
The one I sent her last night seemed to me like something I might post here, so I am, in fact, posting it here.
Dear Grandma,
Today I spent the afternoon with [my niece] Cameron. It was fun. [My brother’s wife] Deborah dropped us off at the park, but not before [my brother] Geoff gave me all the supplies I needed: spare diapers, crackers, and a water bottle.
“You also need one more thing,” Geoff warned me. “You need to know what to say to all the nannies at the park. When they say ‘Oh, you have a beautiful daughter,’ you need to say ‘Oh, she’s not my daughter. I just happen to love children.’ They will all melt.”
Sound advice. However, if any nannies were giving me the eye, I had no time to find out. I was too busy following Cam around the park and preventing her from getting into trouble. A park may seem like a very safe place, but in fact it’s full of danger. In the brief time I was there, I catalogued the following deathtraps:
None of these dangers affected Cam, of course, but that’s only due to my careful diligence.
We came back home and I continued to play with her for a while. One thing Geoff and Deb have done brilliantly is to make Cam love books. They gave her books as soon as she was born, and she’s very used to them. She’s too young to read, but she loves to pull all her books out of her shelf and give them to you so you can read to her. She will follow along and look at the pictures and the colors.
The problem is, the actual content of these books is, I’m sorry to say, poisonous. Have you ever actually read a Dr. Seuss book? Take this incendiary passage from The Foot Book: “One feet, two feet, pig feet, big feet.” What kind of talk is that? How is my niece supposed to ever learn English? She could be permanently impaired as a result of exposure to this sort of thing. And if you think I’m kidding, listen to our President give a speech some time.
At the end of my visit, Cam gave me a big hug, and I was very touched until I went to the door and turned around and said “Bye Cam!” and there was no response and Geoff said “You’ve already been replaced in her affections by a pair of legos.”
Such is the life of an uncle.
Love,
Greg
That’s awesome. I could never talk to my grandma that way. She’d disregard the rest of the letter, worried about terrorist bombs on playgrounds.
‘Sounds like you had quite an adventure!
What a great letter. Don’t take Cam’s reaction too personally...you know little ones like that have the attention span of a gnat!
I need to relax when the kids are at the “play structure”—every time they turn around, I fear a great THUMP.
Don’t feel bad. I’m 27 and Lego’s have replaced a lot of my closest relatives. Can you blame me?
Your catalog of death traps is amazingly perceptive. You must be a great uncle. I’ve observed some parents at the park who don’t even seem to be aware of said hazards.
When I was a nanny the women at the park would swoon all over the men with children. Ladies love men with kids, especially when they’re the unattached uncle.
meteorites?!
Of course, Greg wasn’t at all interested in the swooning and such. He was entirely too busy rescuing Cam from meteorites and the impending terrorist attacks to the see-saw.
Actually Greg, what bothers me most about this post is your obvious disdain for classic literature - building blocks, if you will. Everybody needs a Thneed. You may as well succumb.
The Lorax is one of my all time favorite books--for ADULTS. If Cam does her first show and tell at school and says “Everyone needs a Thneed,” I’m exhuming Theodor Geisel so I can kick his dead ass.
I beg to differ. Everytime Cam and I read one of her Dr. Seuss books we both find new layers of meaning. Take the opening aphorism from the aforementioned “The Foot Book” for example:
“Left foot, left foot.
Right foot, right.
Feet in the day.
Feet in the night.”
In other words, as Cam often observes with a chirp: We must always be conscious of properly building the foundations that support our relationships as we grow. We must stand on our own two feet, but we must also recognize that we have only those two feet on which to stand throughout our lives. These constants can provide comfort in times of sadness or distress, because we can always rely on our own self-reliance.
Next entry: the way, in a subsequent chapter, Dr. Seuss encourages the constructive use of fantasy and frivolity: “Up feet, down feet. Here come clown feet!”
Oh oh, it runs in the family.
“Here come clown feet.” I’m sorry, but that veers very close to child endangerment.
‘Oh, she’s not my daughter. I just happen to love children.’
Yeah, like hell, they’ll melt...they are mandated to turn you in!
My husband is quite convinced that young children and puppies are the best chick magnets, rating only slightly behind a wedding ring and a wife who doesn’t understand him.
So, understandably, he often wants to go to the mall with the children. Isn’t that sweet? I can only assume they have a fabulous time. However, since I’m not INVITED I just don’t know for certain.
Men!
I would make a terrible aunt re:playground hazards. To wit- this morning while driving my father to the BART station we passed an elementary school. As we approached the intersection in front of the school, I noticed an elderly crossing guard shuffling back to the corner. “Why the hell do they need a crossing guard at an intersection with a traffic light?!” I growled impatiently.
“My little Darwinist...,"replied Dad.
I mean, Christ -they teach guide dogs to stop at red lights. How dumb are these kids?
I think we should exhume him and kick his dead ass for leaving his second wife, Audrey, in charge of his legacy - WHY IS SHE ALLOWING TOTAL HACKS TO WRITE UNDER HIS PSEUDONYM?
Ahem.
(backing away from the keyboard...)
“Cam observes with a chirp” That’s the only part of Geoff’s post I believe.
P.S. Can she say disestablishmentarianism yet?
The “Foot Book” has got nothing on the insidious message of “Green Eggs and Ham”: “I would not, could not/ In a box./ I would not, could not/ with a fox.” Good to know there’s boundaries, but it leaves the realm of where and with what he could and would do it wide open.
And Dirty Dan is right, that “just happen to love children” line is pure Uncle Creepy.
Wish my grandpa’d read e-mail, I wouldn’t be so behind in writing.
Have you seen the Legos they make nowadays? If I could, I’d do nothing but stay home and play with Legos all day. Just take a trip to Toys R Us in Times Square..they built an entire Empire State Building and a tyrannosaurus rex out of legos. They didn’t do it like that when I was a kid…
we procreated just to unabashedly buy lots of lego.
i have always felt ripped off to visit jungle gyms and never once seen actual jungle denizens disporting their hairy selves thereon. bring on the lemurs and baboons! brachiation training and technicolor asses!
and don’t forget, legos are just perfect for getting lodged in the throat, especially since being commercially linked with eggos. this “geoff” fellow seems entirely too carefree about playroom dangers.
Legos, can not only replace unlces and aunts but also those park visits! So have I discovered!
I recently became an aunt for the first time, and when you realize that you run a distant second to lego, or a stuffed dragon that sings the alphabet, or an old shirt(yeah, you heard me, an OLD SHIRT), it hurts, I’m not gonna lie to you. You just take what you can get, and one day they hold their arms out to you instead of mummy and daddy and oh! the gloating! and the love! and did I mention the gloating? the gloating is great.
Translation: None of the hot nannies melted at the park, so I thought I would post on my blog about being a great uncle in the hope that some of my readers would melt instead.
*swoon*