Jimmy came into the misfit life I have through Mikey, who was my brother Joey's best friend. Jimmy, a.k.a. , Little Dude, will be six in December of this year. I first met him when he was just two, and it was not love at first sight. Mikey and I were both living with my brother Jordy at the time, and Mikey started dating Lil Dudes mom, Kathy. When Kat first started coming around I really didn't care for her, mostly because I could see where this was heading. It looked to me like love, and that meant eventually, if I could not save Mikey in time, he would be moving on and settling into a life of marriage and kids. I needed to save my misfit brother, and being 16 that meant not liking his girl.
I wasn't really mean to Kat, I just put on the bachelor pig life style I know girls don't really care for. I was just going to scare her away and get Mikey back. Yeah, it wasn't really working, she was a tough chick and he was smitten, bitten by the bug, the love bug. To top it off, she brought over her son to 'meet the guys'. I am openly admitting I was not thrilled about this meeting. We were doing fine without adding to our misfit family. We did not need girls, and we did not need kids. We were doing fine on our own, just us guys, my brother Jordy, Mikey, Jake, and me.
It will forever be etched in my mind the day Kat brought Jimmy over to meet us and have dinner with us. I was annoyed by all the fuss my boys were displaying to make sure everything was in order. We had to put away anything a two year old would break We had to hide anything that was 100% manly and soften up the place to impress the lady coming over. We had to dress for the occasion and suddenly sitting around in our boxers and tee shirts would be come a thing of the past for us. Watching our language was probably going to be the biggest challenge. No manly body noises would be allowed. I found all of this ridiculous, if she can't accept us for who we are and how we live maybe she is not a good fit for us. Us. As if she was dating all of us. Ah, but she was, was she not?
This dinner meeting would be the first time I waited on a woman to be on time. Since that day, I find I am always waiting on a woman in some fashion or another. After waiting for her to show up for 15 minutes, there she was, with kid in tow. I admit, he was a cute kid, and a quiet one at that. Never left her hip or her lap. Stared at all of us like we were aliens. Would not even sit on his own, when she wasn't holding him he was next to Mikey. I knew nothing about kids, having never been around them in my 16 years, the last two being nothing but us men living together, void of girls pushing us around.
One hour into this visit and Lil Dude started opening up to Jake. By the time dinner was over, he was warming up to Jordy. By the time they left that night, I was still out in the cold. I barely got a hug goodbye from this little creature, and it was an air hug. I was exhausted, and all I did was eat and try to be a gentleman for the lady's sake. Four years later and not only am I Lil Dudes Uncle Jett, he is my little dude buddy. Over the years we became friends, we spend lots of time together and share some great memories, even though he is to little to understand they are memories. We've seen each other at our bests, as well as our worse. We love like brothers, we fight like brothers, we play hard and laugh lots. Lil Dude never lets me down, makes me laugh, and helps me enjoy life through the eyes of a kid again. We drive his mom crazy and we share secrets, all of which he fails to keep between the two of us.
There have been many funny moments that have left me in complete stitches with a gut ache from laughing so hard. Lil Dude is a funny kid and has a great sense of humor and a great outlook on the world. Experiencing his learning about life, watching him become who he will be in years to come, has been a privilege for me. In short, being "Uncle Ett to Little Imz" has given me hope for the future of our human race. I see his happiness level soar off the charts, and even in his worse of days, he makes my happiness level soar even higher. His imagination runs rampant through not only his mind but the minds of those he shares his stories with. If I could change anything about him, it would be something so little it would not jeopardize the kid he is. That little thing would be that he would actually HOLD A SECRET long enough to carry through with things before he tells the world, our 'secret'. Then again, it is who he is, and I love that kid just the way he is.
I remember the cold snowy day that LD (Little Dude) decided to go next door to visit grandma Shirley (my mom, rest her soul). He trekked through a path of snow, climbed up the back steps, opened the screen door and before he could open the wood door into her kitchen the screen door shut, smashing him between the doors, not allowing him to turn the knob to get in. My mom and I heard this little voice and when we found where it was coming from, I looked out the door to see him squished between them, calling out "et me in dare, et me in dare (let me in there)".
There were many funny moments as I watched him grow more, learn more, and become more curious about what life sat in front him. Yet that was not enough for me, I needed more laughs, I yearned for more fun, I reached for whatever I could get from this innocent nephew of mine. So I did what all uncles do, I took advantage of his lack of knowledge of how things worked, and purposely set him up for my own enjoyment.
Just recently we went to visit my friend Cheesy, who is mute and talks by signing. Most all of my misfit family has been learning sign language, and LD and Ola (my 1 1/2 year old niece) are probably the two that have learned the fastest. LD and Cheesy get along pretty well and I like that they can 'talk' to each other and it gives LD practice in his signing. Cheesy married Allie, who is a deaf mute. LD easily gets confused over which one can hear and which one cannot. It was fun to mess with LD and see his frustration in communicating with Allie to try to get a cookie from her. She had her back to us and Cheesy kept signing to LD to ask her louder. LD was to the point of yelling "ALLIE CAN I HAVE A COOKIE PWEASE?" when it dawned on him she cannot hear and he needed to go tap her to get her attention. He was peeved at us, because nothing comes between LD and a cookie. When he told her a funny story and she smiled at him he turned to me and said "Allie don't think I am funny" and I explained to him she cannot speak so her smile is a laugh, to which he replied "but I like to hear how funny I am".
I taught LD how to ice skate and it has become a real source of fun for us to go to the rink and skate around and play a little one on one hockey. A tradition we have formed still leaves us exhausted from laughing hard at each other at the end of our ice time. LD will go lay dead center in the middle of the ice, on his back, complaining he is too tired to skate off the ice. I grab my hockey stick, hook it through one of his skates blades and pull him off the ice. When he feels a little playful he will skate back out to center ice and lay back down again for another 'drag' off the ice.
I love being a part of Jimmy's life and I love that he is part of mine. I love teaching him not only life skills but educational skills as well. I love how he grabs his parents cells and gives me a random call, yelling into the phone because he wants to be sure I hear him from so far away. I love how the first thing he does when he comes to Papa's house (Jake) is go to his snack drawer and count everything in it to make sure we didn't take anything out of it. I love how he still misses grandma Shirley even though she has been gone from us for eight months. I love how he uses the same stupid logic I use with him on his little one year old brother Baby C (Channing). I love how he sneaks his toy cars and action figures into the cribs of his twin sisters Abigail and Isabella.
Not only did Little Dude make me an uncle, he showed me how to be an uncle. How to love unconditionally, how to appreciate the little kids in my life, how to share my love with them, how to open my eyes to the innocence of the youth, how to balance being an uncle and being a friend. He made me realize that you not only learn about life from a book, or from adults, or from teachers, or from professors, or even from your peers. You learn about life and everything it has to offer from everyone you meet, from all the people that stay in your life, or simply pass through it. You learn about life from opening your eyes, and peering into others eyes. It is something I tried to teach Gracie to do, to look into the eyes of the person she was speaking to and see what she could see about what they did not reveal in words.
Seeing the world threw the eyes of others will open up the beauty of the world around you. Seeing the world through the eyes of others leads to a better understanding of people hearts and makes one less likely to judge others for the lives they live. When you judge less, you forgive more, you accept more. That is the one lesson of life I have learned through my struggle with sharing my misfit family members with others. As the years roll by, and others are introduced to me through my misfit brothers, the love in my heart swells bigger than I could have ever imagined. That is a task Gracie left behind with me, the challenge of making sure I fill up all the space I have in my heart with love. That is also the challenge I feel LD has brought into my life as well. There was room in Mikey's heart for us, and Kat, and Jimmy, as well as Baby C, Abbey, and Izzy. To think I tried to deter Mikey from moving forward into a life of marriage and children, because I didn't think he would still love me the way he used to.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~Confucius
I wasn't really mean to Kat, I just put on the bachelor pig life style I know girls don't really care for. I was just going to scare her away and get Mikey back. Yeah, it wasn't really working, she was a tough chick and he was smitten, bitten by the bug, the love bug. To top it off, she brought over her son to 'meet the guys'. I am openly admitting I was not thrilled about this meeting. We were doing fine without adding to our misfit family. We did not need girls, and we did not need kids. We were doing fine on our own, just us guys, my brother Jordy, Mikey, Jake, and me.
It will forever be etched in my mind the day Kat brought Jimmy over to meet us and have dinner with us. I was annoyed by all the fuss my boys were displaying to make sure everything was in order. We had to put away anything a two year old would break We had to hide anything that was 100% manly and soften up the place to impress the lady coming over. We had to dress for the occasion and suddenly sitting around in our boxers and tee shirts would be come a thing of the past for us. Watching our language was probably going to be the biggest challenge. No manly body noises would be allowed. I found all of this ridiculous, if she can't accept us for who we are and how we live maybe she is not a good fit for us. Us. As if she was dating all of us. Ah, but she was, was she not?
This dinner meeting would be the first time I waited on a woman to be on time. Since that day, I find I am always waiting on a woman in some fashion or another. After waiting for her to show up for 15 minutes, there she was, with kid in tow. I admit, he was a cute kid, and a quiet one at that. Never left her hip or her lap. Stared at all of us like we were aliens. Would not even sit on his own, when she wasn't holding him he was next to Mikey. I knew nothing about kids, having never been around them in my 16 years, the last two being nothing but us men living together, void of girls pushing us around.
One hour into this visit and Lil Dude started opening up to Jake. By the time dinner was over, he was warming up to Jordy. By the time they left that night, I was still out in the cold. I barely got a hug goodbye from this little creature, and it was an air hug. I was exhausted, and all I did was eat and try to be a gentleman for the lady's sake. Four years later and not only am I Lil Dudes Uncle Jett, he is my little dude buddy. Over the years we became friends, we spend lots of time together and share some great memories, even though he is to little to understand they are memories. We've seen each other at our bests, as well as our worse. We love like brothers, we fight like brothers, we play hard and laugh lots. Lil Dude never lets me down, makes me laugh, and helps me enjoy life through the eyes of a kid again. We drive his mom crazy and we share secrets, all of which he fails to keep between the two of us.
There have been many funny moments that have left me in complete stitches with a gut ache from laughing so hard. Lil Dude is a funny kid and has a great sense of humor and a great outlook on the world. Experiencing his learning about life, watching him become who he will be in years to come, has been a privilege for me. In short, being "Uncle Ett to Little Imz" has given me hope for the future of our human race. I see his happiness level soar off the charts, and even in his worse of days, he makes my happiness level soar even higher. His imagination runs rampant through not only his mind but the minds of those he shares his stories with. If I could change anything about him, it would be something so little it would not jeopardize the kid he is. That little thing would be that he would actually HOLD A SECRET long enough to carry through with things before he tells the world, our 'secret'. Then again, it is who he is, and I love that kid just the way he is.
I remember the cold snowy day that LD (Little Dude) decided to go next door to visit grandma Shirley (my mom, rest her soul). He trekked through a path of snow, climbed up the back steps, opened the screen door and before he could open the wood door into her kitchen the screen door shut, smashing him between the doors, not allowing him to turn the knob to get in. My mom and I heard this little voice and when we found where it was coming from, I looked out the door to see him squished between them, calling out "et me in dare, et me in dare (let me in there)".
There were many funny moments as I watched him grow more, learn more, and become more curious about what life sat in front him. Yet that was not enough for me, I needed more laughs, I yearned for more fun, I reached for whatever I could get from this innocent nephew of mine. So I did what all uncles do, I took advantage of his lack of knowledge of how things worked, and purposely set him up for my own enjoyment.
Just recently we went to visit my friend Cheesy, who is mute and talks by signing. Most all of my misfit family has been learning sign language, and LD and Ola (my 1 1/2 year old niece) are probably the two that have learned the fastest. LD and Cheesy get along pretty well and I like that they can 'talk' to each other and it gives LD practice in his signing. Cheesy married Allie, who is a deaf mute. LD easily gets confused over which one can hear and which one cannot. It was fun to mess with LD and see his frustration in communicating with Allie to try to get a cookie from her. She had her back to us and Cheesy kept signing to LD to ask her louder. LD was to the point of yelling "ALLIE CAN I HAVE A COOKIE PWEASE?" when it dawned on him she cannot hear and he needed to go tap her to get her attention. He was peeved at us, because nothing comes between LD and a cookie. When he told her a funny story and she smiled at him he turned to me and said "Allie don't think I am funny" and I explained to him she cannot speak so her smile is a laugh, to which he replied "but I like to hear how funny I am".
I taught LD how to ice skate and it has become a real source of fun for us to go to the rink and skate around and play a little one on one hockey. A tradition we have formed still leaves us exhausted from laughing hard at each other at the end of our ice time. LD will go lay dead center in the middle of the ice, on his back, complaining he is too tired to skate off the ice. I grab my hockey stick, hook it through one of his skates blades and pull him off the ice. When he feels a little playful he will skate back out to center ice and lay back down again for another 'drag' off the ice.
I love being a part of Jimmy's life and I love that he is part of mine. I love teaching him not only life skills but educational skills as well. I love how he grabs his parents cells and gives me a random call, yelling into the phone because he wants to be sure I hear him from so far away. I love how the first thing he does when he comes to Papa's house (Jake) is go to his snack drawer and count everything in it to make sure we didn't take anything out of it. I love how he still misses grandma Shirley even though she has been gone from us for eight months. I love how he uses the same stupid logic I use with him on his little one year old brother Baby C (Channing). I love how he sneaks his toy cars and action figures into the cribs of his twin sisters Abigail and Isabella.
Not only did Little Dude make me an uncle, he showed me how to be an uncle. How to love unconditionally, how to appreciate the little kids in my life, how to share my love with them, how to open my eyes to the innocence of the youth, how to balance being an uncle and being a friend. He made me realize that you not only learn about life from a book, or from adults, or from teachers, or from professors, or even from your peers. You learn about life and everything it has to offer from everyone you meet, from all the people that stay in your life, or simply pass through it. You learn about life from opening your eyes, and peering into others eyes. It is something I tried to teach Gracie to do, to look into the eyes of the person she was speaking to and see what she could see about what they did not reveal in words.
Seeing the world threw the eyes of others will open up the beauty of the world around you. Seeing the world through the eyes of others leads to a better understanding of people hearts and makes one less likely to judge others for the lives they live. When you judge less, you forgive more, you accept more. That is the one lesson of life I have learned through my struggle with sharing my misfit family members with others. As the years roll by, and others are introduced to me through my misfit brothers, the love in my heart swells bigger than I could have ever imagined. That is a task Gracie left behind with me, the challenge of making sure I fill up all the space I have in my heart with love. That is also the challenge I feel LD has brought into my life as well. There was room in Mikey's heart for us, and Kat, and Jimmy, as well as Baby C, Abbey, and Izzy. To think I tried to deter Mikey from moving forward into a life of marriage and children, because I didn't think he would still love me the way he used to.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~Confucius
