Happy birthday, dude!

Today is my younger nephew’s thirteen birthday. As it’s an aunt’s privilege to spoil the kids rotten with junk food, take them places their parents don’t approve of, and tell embarrassing tales from their younger youth, I feel it’s my duty to share the following story:

My husband and I like to attend air shows (let’s just say that my husband (a fighter pilot in his dreams) LOVES to go to air shows. I like most of the acts well enough to tag along, collecting material for future novels). He’d been looking forward to the time when my two older nephews would be old enough go with us (that’s to say, when my brother and his ex would allow us to take them and they would be old enough to tolerate long car rides, crowds, porta-potties and the sound of screaming jet engines).

This happened a few years back, the show was at an airport only an hour and a half away, and we thought that the timing would be perfect. Older nephew, then 11, was and still is a pretty mellow dude, and didn’t mind the trip. Didn’t mind the heat, and was more than ready to feel the earth shake beneath his feet.

The younger one was 9 at the time, and let me preface this by saying that he is a smart, talented, responsible and adorable kid, but he was, shall we say, a tad cranky from the moment we got into the car to the moment we pulled into the airport. It was too hot. The trip was too long. He’d forgotten his sunglasses and the sun hurt his eyes. Again he was too hot. And he was hungry.

And for him, the day never got any better. Even though we bought him sunglasses, frozen lemonade, bottled water, fried dough, souvenir handbooks. While his brother and my husband elbowed their way to the flight line with their cameras, the younger one (I could sympathize; we share the same fair skin and aversion to the heat) curled into a grumpy heap on his camp chair, nursing his third frozen lemonade. And with every request he made, I could feel my husband’s patience (usually quite good with the kids) growing thinner, and thinner, and thinner.

Finally it snapped.

“How long is this supposed to last?” my nephew said.

Husband said through his teeth, “It’s going to be going on all day and we told you that from the start and we bought you everything you asked for and I’m not made of money and if you don’t like it you can go sit in the car.”

There was no more complaining for a while.

As promised, the ground shook. Jets took off straight up from the ground, swirling dust all around us. Wing walkers kept their balance against tiny poles on tiny biplanes. Jets whose names I couldn’t remember (husband knows not only what they are called but could identify them out of the sky including the manufacturer and the history of the design) screamed overhead, doing stultifying maneuvers, made arcs up through the clouds as gracefully as diving birds.

OK, I like air shows a little.

Then, with the last poetic overpass, the show was over.

We started packing up to go.

“You mean it’s over already?” my younger nephew said.

Let me say this again. Younger nephew (like his brother) is an adorable kid. With a sweet smile and big brown eyes. And I’m sure this has saved his bacon many, many times. Still, a vein atop my husband’s head began to throb.

Then we left, and even though we usually wait for the crowd to thin out, the traffic back to the highway was still murderous. Younger nephew’s complaints kept coming. Why is the traffic so heavy and when are we going to get home and I’m hungry! Also weighing on me (and I’m sure it was weighing on my husband) was that we’d agreed not only to take them to the show for the day but pick up a pizza and have them sleep over our house that night.

At that time, we had twin beds in our guest room, and when they stayed over, the two boys took turns choosing who got which bed (the one closest to the wall was the preferred one) but they’d forgotten whose turn it was to choose. So the older nephew, employing the principal of squatters rights, calmly staked his claim by putting his stuff on the inside bed. This made the younger one crazy. He yelled. He pleaded. Apparently this didn't bring about the desired results, so he came to get me.

“He took the good bed! It’s not even his turn!”

I admit I was getting a little tired of arbitrating the skirmishes myself. Tiredly, I said, “You’re just going to have to work this one out for yourselves. If not, I’ll send your uncle in.”

And my 9-year-old nephew looked up at me with those melting-chocolate eyes. “You do it,” he said. “I think my uncle’s had enough of me for today.”