Tony's note: sorry about the delay in posting this. It seems like it takes me more than i realize to get back into the swing of things after a  vacation. Maybe I need a vacation from my vacation.

I was on my own…

I lined the kids up and as I looked at them lined up one beside the other, I began to remember a situation much like this one from my own childhood. My older cousins and myself were standing in front of my Uncle Crazy Joe as he lined us up like a little Marine unit of snot nose misfits. “Your baby cousin Joseph is asleep over there.” He pointed to where my two year old cousin was sleeping at the end of the red sofa in my grandmother‘s house. “He’s still little and you guys are big so you have to watch over him.” My Uncle Crazy Joe always came up with things like this after leaving the Marines, that’s why we called him Crazy Joe. “He’s just a baby” He looked at my older cousin Emilio, “You understand private!”

“Yes sir!” my cousin answered. He was cut from the same cloth as my Uncle Crazy Joe and years later would join the Marines himself and go crazy.

“He’s a baby and needs to be protected.” Just as Crazy Joe said that my younger cousin Ruben came running through the house as he was being chased by my brother while playing some kid game. He ran right past our little squad, past Crazy Joe and jumped on the sofa landing on my two year old cousin’s face. He didn’t sit on Joseph’s face for very long - just long enough to sit on it and then jump off as Crazy Joe yelled and ran after him.

My cousin Joseph woke up and cried a little bit but I think he cried more at the yelling than at the fact that he had just gotten his face sat on by his older cousin Ruben. We all looked at each other and started laughing so hard that we were falling to the floor. I don’t remember who said it, but someone said, “look at Joseph, he’s got Ruben’s butt crack mark on his face! He’s a buttface!” we all cried with laughter. For years after that we would remind Joseph that Ruben had stamped his butt crack on his face while he was sleeping, so he was in fact a true buttface.

As I looked at the kids I made up my mind that nothing like that was going to happen on my watch. Sure I’ve had kids roll off the bed when they were asleep when I was on watch. I even had my little cousin Joseph fall asleep on the floor and when I saw his mom coming to pick him up I tried to grab him and put him in the room so she wouldn’t see the dog licking his face while he slept on the floor. I was in a hurry and trying to beat my aunt to the room when I accidently knocked my cousin Joseph’s head against the doorframe as I tried to take him to the room (sorry Joseph - I guess that explains your funny shaped head). If you look at Joseph’s childhood pictures you’ll see his head looks like a giant light bulb and it continued to look that way until he went to junior high. When his mom asked why he was crying I told my aunt that I didn’t know, but when he saw her through the window he began to cry. I told her that I thought it was because he missed her and wanted her to pick him up. She looked at me and smiled then hugged my cousin Joseph “Oh, darlin’ I missed you too.“

As the fog of memories past faded I could see the snow cone hut a few feet away, but it might have has been all way in kokomo because none of the kids were moving until they were declared the leader. “How about we take turns being the leader?” I tried to reason with them, which was like trying to reason with three to six year olds…oh yeah.

“No. I’m the leader…” my oldest nephew said.

“I am” his little sister said balling up her fists.

“I’m the leader” my other niece said

My oldest nephew started laughing. “That’s classic,” he said between laughter. “you can’t be a leader.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a stinky girls and we don’t want no stinky leader?” my six year old nephew looked at my two year old nephew and said, “we don’t want no stinky girl leader, right?”

My little nephew turned to my niece and said, “you’re a stinky girl.”

“well, you smell like poop!” His older sister teased.

The kids started telling each other how bad they all smelled when I had my epiphany. “You all see that table with the umbrella?” I pointed to the plastic table with the fake grass umbrella over it

“Yeah,” they shouted.

“Well the last one there is a monkey” as I said that that thought went through my head “…and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” but I didn’t say that out loud. The kids lined up and made the ruckus that only other people’s kids make when you’re trying to enjoy your greasy, fried fast food. “One. Two. Three…Go!” The kids took off making even more noise and attracting the looks of more people as they ran to the table with the fake grass umbrella on it.

My youngest nephew was the slowest as they ran so I pretended to run beside him like we were racing. I couldn’t let him lose because I didn’t want him to be stuck as a monkey for a good part of his life like my cousin had been stuck with being a buttface because he got sat on. I didn’t want my nephew to be called a monkey because he lost the race. We made it to the table and I was the loser so I was the monkey which made the kid laugh.

“You smell like a monkey butt” My oldest nephew said, which made everyone laugh even more.

“You’re a monkey butt” my youngest nephew laughed as he pointed at me.

“Hey,” I protested. “I didn’t say the loser would be a monkey butt or smell like a monkey butt. I said the loser would be a monkey. There’s a difference between a monkey and a monkey butt.”

“You’re a monkey butt. You’re a monkey butt. You’re a monkey and you smell like one too.” The kids thought they were funny.

“Monkey butt” my youngest nephew laughed. “Monkey butt. You’re a Monkey butt”

“Dude, I saved you.” I said.

“You’re a monkey butt” he said again and everyone laughed that innocent, uncontrolled laughter of children. I couldn’t help but laugh too.

About this time my sister in law came, “You guys still haven’t ordered anything yet?” She pulled a package of disinfecting wipes from my mom’s magical grandma bag. It’s a big orange canvas bag that seems to hold everything you could ever want, from disinfecting wipes to little lollipops that take away any and all of childhood’s little pains or at least make them feel a little less painful. The orange bag was like magic because you could find anything in it that you needed from baby bottles, to little stuffed animals. Once when we went to the movies I saw her pull out a bag of popcorn, soda and candy for each of us. “I just came to check on you guys” my sister in law said as she wiped down the table with the disinfecting wipe.

“We were just about to go order sno-cones” I said trying to look at her feet but trying not to be too obvious about it to see if they looked any better after her pedicure. I even took a deep breath through my nose to see if I could smell them or not. “you already had your feet done?”

“No’ she said, “they only had one chair open so I let your mom go first.”

I thought to myself, you mean that all this time and you haven’t even had anyone look at your feet. I didn’t say that all I said was “oh” as in Oh Gawd, please help me through this.



and still this story continues...