Y is for...

Yard-apes

This one is dedicated to my lurking Uncle Na. He reads and never comments. Oh yeah, that's right. I know you're there, punk...

This is his and my uncle Darren's term for their nieces and nephews.

This word reminds me of my childhood and family get-togethers. My mom has five brothers, so I have lots of cousins on her side of the family and when we were young, we got together a lot. Most of us were spaced in age by only a year or two, so there was usually someone we could play with. The boys would go off and dig a giant hole. The girls would go off and play house or Barbies. Or some of us girls would chase the boys around and try to be included. And every get together would usually include a wrestling session on the living room floor with my two dorky uncles. We all would gang up on one or both of them and feebly try to bring them down. I have a little bit of pity for them now thinking about all the screaming brats climbing all over them. I wonder how many bruises they could count when they went back home.

One thing I particularly remember is how my Uncle Na would "turn his eyes inside out" so that you could see the red inside of his eyelid. He would run around like this scaring all of us. I was one of the younger cousins at the time and I tended to be more "delicate" then the other ones. It would really scare me when he did this, so he would take pity on me and throw me up on his shoulders so I could participate, but not actually look at him.

As we grew up, we developed new games to play. One summer, right before Na left to go back to CA, he brought us all outside and whipped out three Super-Soakers from the back of the pickup and started a water fight. I think he was trying to lighten the mood as him leaving always inevitably brought tears. And now, every other Christmas when he comes up to MT, the tradition is to sit down and play the Farming Game nonstop all throughout the night. We always have the same game pieces and we ALWAYS have Metallica on in the background set to repeat.

Now, both of my "younger" uncles have little girls of their own. I'm sad for my little cousins that they will miss out on those big Davis get-togethers with all the cousins. But, on the other hand, they are just as lucky as we were because they get the experience of having my dorky uncles as their own dorky dads.