Dave sez,
I'm the youngest in my family. My sister, Paula, is the oldest. I
have two older brothers. Let me share some cool memories with you.
When I was a younger kid, my sister would pull me up on her feet and I
would get to pretend I was flying. It was great. We were very close
growing up. So close, that when she went away for a weekend with
friends, I had a little too much chocolate and blew up like blueberry
Violet in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I managed to deflate by
the time she got home. She's married to a really great guy. My nephew
Sean is literally in Paradise. He served our country a couple years in
the Marines in Afghanistan; now he's in Hawaii. I keep telling him to
say "Hi!" to Tom Sellick for me! My nephew Kevin and his wife, Erin,
live close by their folks with their little sweetheart, Ivy.
It was right around the time that my sister got married that my Mom
started working a little bit more on my reading skills. I started
reading books. As a reward, she introduced me to comic books.
Not too long afterward, my older brother Tim took me to see Star Wars.
My brothers got me interested in sports. Mostly baseball. My brother
Matt, and Tim, loved baseball and taught me how to pitch and run bases.
Matt always told me to keep my eye on the ball. The first time I
pitched, he kept telling me that. Keep your eye on the ball, baby
brother, he said. I did. I kept my eye on it as he hit it back to me. I
kept my eye on it the bigger and bigger it got. It got as big as a moon
("That's no moon...")
We all had a good laugh over the black eye I got from the worn league ball. We still laugh over that.
Cathy and I hadn't had a chance to see my sister and the family since
Cathy's birthday last year. We hadn't had a chance to introduce them to
their new nephew, Justin.
We didn't want him to be nervous about meeting them. So I started
telling him that I really wanted him to meet his Uncle John and Aunt
Paula. He has a big family, with a lot of aunts and uncles, but these
were the real deal. He even wrote on his calendar on the Friday before
Memorial Day, "Going to si (sp) Pop's sister". He was a little nervous
with the introductions, but he warmed right up to them. It's good that
he could tell right away, just how cool we already know they are.
I told my sister that her nephew is the one of the Midwest producers
and distributors of sarcasm. "I like him already!" she told me.
We had a bit of a bumpy patch. We went go-carting and Justin was all
excited to drive. Until he was measured for height, and he was told that
he was too short to drive his own cart. That was a major bummer. Until
Mommy got him into one of the fastest carts on the planet. She lapped
me, John and Kevin, with Justin waving, yelling "Hi!" and laughing at
how slow we were.
The rest of the weekend was fantastic! A little bit of soccer. A pool
party. Some Spongebob. Usually, Justin gets a bed and we sleep on the
floor on an air mattress. This time, we got a bed, he got an air
mattress. We wore him out so that he fell asleep and had sweet dreams!
He dreamed that he was the Black Power Ranger fighting Moogers.
So, all in all a pretty awesome weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment