Uncle Boo Boo

     Over the years, I have grown much closer to my older sister.  In our youth, we had our knock down drag out fights.  As I recall, one of them even led to us not speaking for a couple of years.  But as age and wisdom fall on me, I have come to realize the value of family.  My sister Annie and I chose different paths in life and hers led her to a house full of kids and more recently grandchildren.   I had one child that I was unaware of until she was almost voting age. (that’s a story for another day)  I have come to covet the family that Annie has.  She has her problems no doubt, but the love that flows through her family is evident and every time I go home to her house in Illinois, I bask in the feeling of family that wraps me up like a hand knitted blanket.

 My sister Annie.

    Most recently, Annie has had the blessing of grandchildren.  Her 4 year old grandson Blaze is far and away the most engaging and entertaining of them.  Blazes (as we call him) is a spitfire four fifty four, four on the floor, full house—with a blower.  He is non stop, and fears nothing created by man.  It’s a pretty impressive trait in my opinion.   Now, around Annies house, I have always been known simply as “Uncle Howie."  Everyone, even my sister called me that.  It has always seemed fitting enough.  I was always the guy who escaped the family life and ran away and chased his dreams.  I know that a lot of the members of my family coveted the life I appeared to have.  I became the quasi popular, cool family member that everyone wonders about. 

     Blazes changed all of that in a single breath.  Last year, Annie called me and asked if she could come down with her husband and spend a week with us in sunny Florida.  I was delighted to say absolutely.  She called back a couple of days later and asked if it would be OK to bring a then 3 year old Blaze with them.  Melissa and I reveled at the idea of children’s laughter once again bouncing through our hallways and we both eagerly agreed.  So the date was set and we prepared for a week with the company of my family. 

 Blazes in Florida

True to his name, Blaze was a ball of energy.  He wanted to know about everything.  I would take him out to the barn in the morning telling him it was time to work.  “Werk! Werk!” he would exclaim as we were feeding the horses and the goats.  Despite his age, Blaze had some trouble grasping his talking skills, so even at the age of three and a half years old, he was still struggling with a lot of things he was trying to say.  When he got a word right he stuck to it.  Just ask our old neighbor Tim.  One night while we were sitting around the bonfire, Tim came home.  You could not see him, but we heard his truck pull up and the door slam.   I yelled into the darkness “Hey Tim."  Tim yelled back that he would be right over.

Blaze was aghast.  Did this man just yell the word Tim into the darkness and get a response?  So Blaze tried it.  “Tim, Tim, TIM!"  And Tim yelled back to Blaze.  “Yeah."  Then to Blazes amazement, a 6 foot tall burly redneck slid out of the shadows and joined us at the bonfire.  You could see it in his face that Blaze thought this was just the neatest thing ever.  He spent the rest of the night running around the fire yelling Tim’s name.  When he got tired of that exercise, he would come over and pull on my hand and say “Werk, Werk."  I had to explain to him that we had already fed the horses and it would have to wait until tomorrow. 

Now, up to this point, Blaze had not quite gotten my name down right.  Annie would ask him “who is that?"  Blaze would respond “ahgabhaha."  Annie would correct him “that’s Howie."  But he couldn’t seem to grasp it.  But that night, Annie had a stroke of genius.  She asked Blaze what happens when you fall down and hurt your arm?  She said “owie." “Owie” repeated Blaze.  She pointed at me and said “Howie."  “Howie” repeated the boy. Success! Annie repeated this a few more times to insure that Blaze had got the concept of my name down pretty well.  Then we put Blaze to bed and had a couple more beers before hitting the sack ourselves.

The next morning, my sister was anxious to put Blaze to the test and see if he could still remember my name.  As soon as we were all together in the kitchen, Annie looked at me and asked “who is that?" You could see Blaze was struggling to remember the previous nights lesson.  He looked at Annie and she pointed to her arm as a reminder.  You could see Blaze make the connection and at once jumped up and said “Boo Boo!"  The laughter was uncontrollable. I knew in an instant that I would be forever marked within my family. Word of the remark spread through my family like a fire.  Sure enough, from that day forward, I have become known as Uncle Boo Boo within my family circles. In my younger days, I may have found this a bit embarrassing, but now, it suits me just fine.  I just wonder if  Melissa understands, that this makes her Yogi.