Thankful for an abundance of uncles

I really hate the thought of my children someday winding up in a therapy group with nothing to talk about, or worse yet, no one to blame for life’s problems. So I try to regularly supply them with people and situations onto which to pin their confusion.

When were at RuthAnn and Ken Craven’s home the other evening, my son Connor made the mistake of saying, “I’m confused,” to which Ken responded, “Hi, I’m Ken. Pleased to meet you, Confused.” Connor finally caught on and laughed.

Ken mostly picked on Kate. It’s more fun to pick on Kate because she grows frustrated more quickly. She’d flip a coin and ask Ken to call it. He’d pull the old, “Heads I win, tails you lose” sleight of tongue, leaving her baffled.

In the car, on the way home, Kate wanted to know how the Cravens were related to us.

“They’re not,” I informed.

“What do you mean, they’re not?!” she wanted to know. “If Alan Seifke is our uncle and RuthAnn is his mother, doesn’t that make them our great aunt and uncle?”

I was forced to explain the faulty premise on which she had constructed her logic. “Alan was never your uncle in the first place,” I began.

“What?! Then why do we call him Uncle Alan?”

“Because he’s LIKE an uncle,” I said. “In order for him to really be your uncle, he would have to be either my brother or your dad’s or step-dad’s brother, but he’s not.”

“But we had the same Grandpa Seifke,” she countered.

“No we didn’t,” I said. “We just referred to Alan’s Grandpa Seifke as ‘Grandpa’ because he was very old and that’s what everybody called him. It would have been disrespectful to let you call him ‘Donald” and ‘Mr. Seifke’ sounded too formal. So we went with ‘Grandpa.’ That’s just the way it was.” Complicated.

Complicated relationships populate our lives. My kids have more “uncles” than a gangster movie: Uncle Jim teases them at the Grange; Uncle Alec got Connor his first violin; Uncle Don let them ride on his pontoon and in his airplane; Uncle Tom has a rambunctious dog; Uncle Wayne always gives them candy; Uncle Homer is a real Indian.

In reality, my kids have seven (actual relative) uncles: Uncle Bob, Uncle David, Uncle Craig, Uncle Tim, Uncle Don, Uncle Kevin and Uncle Larry. The first two are great uncles, the last they’ve never met, and five of the seven live out of state, in Ohio, Texas, Georgia, New Mexico, and Washington. There used to be four more, but in my kids’ short lifetime, we’ve lost uncles Merlin, Bud, Elmer, and Dick on my dad’s side of the family.

Perhaps that spurred our need to manufacture a new batch of functional uncles. You can always use another uncle to make a fuss over you or to watch your back. They tie shoes, dry tears, nudge progress, pat bottoms, smooth hair, tell stories, correct, redirect, and share gum and wisdom. Who doesn’t need more of that kind of moral support?

If there’s not enough family to adequately cover all the bases, it’s crucial to recruit stand-ins. In addition to your family of chance (the one you were born into), there’s your family of choice (the one you invite into your life). Special bonds abound for those who are open to the possibility.

While I’m no genius, my personal Theory of Relativity is that people who feel like family ARE family. So adopt some adult relatives today. Don’t stop with just uncles, collect a whole set. Last year my honorary dads Paul Jones and Stan Bartos walked me down the aisle and my honorary workplace-acquired mom, Margaret McCabe, sat up front, in the family section of the church.

Sociologists have a name for these fondly fabricated relatives. They call them “fictive kin,” with “fict” no doubt borrowed from the word “fictional.” As a writer, this suits me fine. I’m all about inventing relatives to fill in the relational gaps in my family life. I have no intention of stopping anytime soon . . . .  not unless someone cries “uncle.”

Sousa Bueller has a productive day off

One of the surest signs I’m too busy is I start resenting those who aren’t. When I’m at my most overwhelmed, I’m most at risk for popping someone in the mouth following their declaration of “I’m bored” or “I have nothing to do.”

When I worked at The Daily Reporter, we got calls from people complaining their newspaper was five minutes late. Ten minutes late would elevate it to a capital crime in their minds. I thought the real criminal unfairness was that they had the kind of time on their hands to notice a slight delay.

I’ve no idea when my newspaper and mail arrive, except that it’s sometime while I’m away at work. But in anticipation of retirement, I’ve already positioned my porch swing in the direction of my newspaper and mail boxes, craving the day when, armed with a stopwatch, I’ll be able to monitor and report on the activities of the busy.

One of my former bosses regularly became exasperated when “loafers of leisure” (his term for anyone who wasn’t working) managed to muck up the works of the working. He was venomous regarding retirees. “They’ve got all day to lunch, but they always eat between noon and 1 PM, just so they can get in the way of the working stiffs. Senior coffee, my butt!”

I am more of an equal opportunity curmudgeon, indiscriminately begrudging anyone who doesn’t have to go out to work: Independently wealthies, pre-schoolers, people with injuries or disabilities, lottery winners, stay-at-home moms, and even my pets.

I looked at my dog and cat on my way out the door one particularly busy day and felt a wave of envy. Having just eaten, Shirley the cat was curled up for the duration on the soft cushion of a rocking chair near a warm air register.

Sousa the dog, who at least had the ambition to see the kids off on the school bus, had hunkered down on a plush rug. My level of resentment rose. Like the sign says, “When I die, I want to come back as my pet.” Heck, I want to be one of my pets right now! They’ve got it good.

I’d like to think if she had the ability, Sousa would gladly help me with things around the house. But alas, her paws put her at a dexterous disadvantage. Other than using her tongue to clean up kitchen spills and her nose to herd the cat, she’s not much practical use. Sure, she barks a little, but usually just at people she knows. Not exactly a stellar watchdog credential.

An English shepherd (similar to a border collie), Sousa was born with a “can-do” willingness and is up for any trip or adventure no matter what time of day or night. Keenly intelligent, her limits in life were imposed only by my limited knowledge and ability to train her for things more advanced than napping.

So just what would Sousa do if given the opportunity? Well, I found out the day I accidentally left the front door open. When I returned from work that night, she greeted me at the end of the driveway. Uh oh. My children had just watched the movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” so I was well-versed on the perils of being home alone, unsupervised.

I walked in through the open front door and stopped short of tripping over a dead squirrel. I recognized it as the one that incessantly chattered at Sousa from a large maple outside the parlor window. Mistakenly thinking she couldn’t get at him, he’d made the fatal error of taking his taunts to a lower level.

Also in the dining room was a dead woodchuck, or rather what was left of one. I had no knowledge of his transgressions other than he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time on Sousa Bueller’s day off.

To quench her huntress’s thirst, Sousa had dragged a case of the kids’ juice boxes off the pantry shelf to the parlor, where she had ravaged them. As I buried her victims, I decided Sousa Bueller could return tomorrow to her (now) unenviable life of leisure loafing. It suddenly was okay with me.

Stop, in the name of the water police!

“Stop running that water! It’s money down the drain. When you start paying the bills, you can waste all the water you want. But as long as you’re living under my roof, wasting precious commodities like water and mom’s money will not be tolerated.”

My daughter looks at me unblinkingly. She and her brother were just trying to rinse the rust off some old metal hardware treasures they’d unearthed out by the barn. I was the one being unreasonable. Hadn’t I ever been a kid? She had her doubts, which I’m inclined to share.

Like me, I’m guessing most of you grew up mentally compiling a list of uptight behaviors you said you would never engage in once you became an adult. How’s that working out for y’all? I vowed I would always listen to my future children. I was also not going to yell at them. We can see how long that lasted.

Another item on my laundry list of “I’ll nevers” was to not always hassle family members over their dirty clothing. But I catch myself several times per week yelling at my children to make sure they have gathered both dirty socks, removed their underwear from their pants, and turned their shirts right side out before putting them into the washer. Don’t even get me started on the evils of grass-stained jeans knees.

My most embarrassing renege on my childhood promise to myself is that I’ve become a self-appointed household water monitor. My ears prick up when a faucet handle is turned and I swear I can hear the submersible pump running some 50 feet from the house, even over the sounds of TV and furnace. My shallow perspective governs the depth of bath water and the length of showers.

When did I become so pathetic? It wasn’t overnight, but a gradual, slippery slope descent into regulatory behavior that started with moving into town and paying my first water bill at the tender age of 23. It wasn’t a staggering amount, probably around $8, but it made a significant impression on my previously recessive genetic thrift tendencies.

Careless behavior costs. It also haunts. One time, when the kids were 4 and 5, they asked to use the bathroom at the Marshall Library while I was checking out our books. After they took exceptionally long, I opened the bathroom door and yelled (there I go again!) for them to hurry. Kate emerged, her sweatshirt sleeves wet up to her elbows.

Connor, who was going through a lengthy, pre-school phase of carrying a pocketful of pennies everywhere, had dropped several into the toilet. The pair was working feverishly at retrieval. I sent Kate to tell Connor to just leave the money so we could leave.

Connor then emerged, on the verge of tears, dripping toilet water onto the library lobby carpet. “But Mom, I can’t leave them. You’re always saying how wrong it is to throw money down the toilet.”

Entrapped by my own anal retentiveness, I was forced to go into the bathroom and stick my hands into the toilet to rescue the last wayward pennies. After thoroughly washing our hands and stripping the children of their wet shirts, I left the bathroom to laughter and applause from the library staff and patrons who had witnessed the scene.

Upon hearing the story, my friend Stan delighted Connor with the old restroom joke of seeing a man deliberately toss a quarter into a urinal, then quickly retrieve it. When another man asked why he did that, the first man replied, “I had accidentally dropped a dime in there. Ten cents isn’t worth retrieving, but 35 cents is a different story.”

Fiscal conservative used to be a dirty label. Now it’s my way of life. Funny, though, it chose to manifest itself with the water issue, as I now have well water. The water money meter no longer runs unchecked as it did during the various times I was a city dweller.

Stan’s joke reminded me of the punchline to another funny story, “Madam, we’ve already established what you are, we’re now just haggling over the price.” Apparently, that’s the joke I’ve become.

Advice seeking replaces real thought

Advice columns are one of the first features I turn to in any newspaper, following the obituaries. While the obituaries often leave me wishing I had known the deceased while they were alive, advice columns have the opposite effect.

Nowhere is a greater amount of ignorance assembled for public display than in the advice columns. They repeatedly prove there are such things as stupid questions, and in spades. I put down the newspaper feeling like a Rhodes Scholar because if nothing else, I’m smart enough to not seek life’s answers from advice columnists.

Truthfully, I read advice columns because I no longer live in an apartment complex where I can rely on thin walls and thick-headed neighbors for entertainment. Plus, I’m at work while the Jerry Springer show airs and TV soap operas reign, so I have to get my vicarious fix by reading about other people’s problems.

Many letters start out this way: “Dear Advice Columnist, My spouse (child, co-worker, neighbor, etc.) and I can’t agree on this issue, so we’re writing to have you settle the bet.”

They’ve lost me right there. The thought of my husband saying “We’re taking this to a higher authority – Dear Abby!” is ridiculous.

If we already can’t agree on a solution, I can’t imagine us agreeing to turn it over to a Carolyn Hax, Heloise, Bruce Williams, Dr. Gott, or Suze Orman for the final word. Who’s got the luxury of putting a truly burning issue on hold?

Case in point: A mother recently wrote to Dear Abby after hacking into her teenage son’s e-mail account, discovering that his girlfriend was pregnant, and learning that he was feeling depressed and suicidal. The mother had written, worried, because she had violated parent/child etiquette by snooping and wondered what she should do with the information gained through inappropriate means.

Dear Advice Seeker, let me diagnose the problem in the way Dear Abby was too gutless to: Your family is burning down around you and instead of grabbing a bucket of water, you write an advice columnist in hope she will pick your letter to answer from among the thousands she receives each week?!

The first thing you need to do is remove your head from the sand and/or the body crevice from where it appears to be lodged. Put down your pen and establish a direct relationship with your son. Replace detective work with dialogue and start thinking for yourself. Take meaningful action. Deal with reality instead of expecting other people to do it for you.

But in a world where people regularly look for happiness outside of themselves, it made twisted sense this woman went shopping for external answers. As with most modern problems, it was traceable to the technologies that have both transformed our lives and succeeded in speeding the collective dumbing down of our populace.

Why bother to learn basic math when you’ve got a calculator, spelling when you’ve got an on-line dictionary, history when you can Google it, or problem-solving when you can ask a stranger, albeit a national expert?

One of the saddest days was when the game shows that used to pay out in Rice-a-Roni started letting contestants poll the audience or call friends for answers versus using their own noodles. There was already enough non-thinking going on without awarding cash prizes for ignorance.

Back among the advice column inquirers are people whose questions reveal entirely too much time on their hands and space between their ears. Someone wrote to Dear Abby that a brother had died at 11 PM June 12 in Wyoming, which was 1 AM June 13 in Connecticut, where the writer lives. Which date should she get tattooed on her body to memorialize him?

Why not just have “IDIOT” tattooed across the forehead? I’d perform the work for free in the name of truth in advertising.

Another advice seeker seriously asked what to do when you sit on a squeaky seat that makes a noise like you passed gas. My thought? As no one will believe your denials, go ahead and pass some gas. If you’re going to do the time, why not do the crime? Sound advice, indeed.