MANANA!

I have a nephew. He is 1½ years old. He loves the movie cars and toy story. His favourite thing to say is ‘Oh No!’ while pointing randomly. He refuses to stop moving even for a moment, even when sleeping. He likes to share, and when doing something wrong and getting caught, will continue to do said wrong thing, only much more slowly while maintaining eye contact as if him moving slowly will prevent you from seeing the wrong action. It’s the Jurassic Park approach to wrong doing. He also seems magnetically drawn to danger. He will make a B-Line straight to unattended stairs, will run towards the edge of tables, and I’m fairly sure if he found a pair of scissors or butterknife, would dive head and metal first into an electrical socket. My mother refers to this behaviour as ‘full of beans’. I disagree. This behaviour is more of a ‘full of deathwish’. I think it’s because he giggles all the time while doing it, and if you’re paying attention its pretty easy to stop him from climbing into the mouth of a grizzly or sucking on a blowtorch or something. But that’s the thing IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND! On a plane a few months ago I had him on the seat next to me, he purposely knocked his toy to the floor and the split second I took to grab it, he dove head first off the chair. The stewardesses looked at me as if I were horrible and neglectful and the old lady across the aisle mumbled ‘gotta watch em every second’... thanks old lady. I have Evil Kineval as a nephew. Watch him every second? He’s this fucking close to setting up flaming rings to jump through on his buzz lightyear bigwheel.

I love the little guy more than anything, but I am always relieved when I hand him back to his parents. I’m cautious, but easily distracted by shiny things. I can’t wait till he’s a bit older and I can be the uncle that has advice on usefull things like fighting and... not liking authority?... Alright, I may not be the greatest uncle, but my love is unconditional and my desire to help is genuine. Let the others teach him not to cut electrical wires, diving head first off the roof is bad, and that fire burns. Once he has a basic grasp of how to stay alive on his own, then i’ll get to shine.

Although I am concerned that my brother in law has weird views about bullies. Him being a teacher, and apparently never having been picked on a child, seems to have the whole ‘tell an adult and talk about feelings’ approach to bullies. I disagree. Now as Evil Kineval is his son, not mine, I will of course defer to his school of thought on the subject, but if lil evil comes up to me and says ‘Dad told me to tell a teacher, but it’s not helping, the bully’s going to beat me up after school.’ I’m probably going to teach him how to fight. Fortunately my sister got into more fights as a kid than I did, and will probably teach him to fight long before I get to. Which is definitely to his benefit. She’s terrifying when angry.

I also have the honour of being his Godfather, so I get to instruct him on all matters theological. I am very excited by this prospect. He’s going to be the only kid who can speak latin, greek and Hebrew, can name every ecumenical council, and can perfectly articulate which Hagiography is his favourite and why Protestantism is fundamentally flawed (It is). If he grows up to be an Atheist, Johova’s Witness, Mormon or Buddhist, I will be fine with it so long as he can explain in perfect detail why he’s making that decision. No nephew/godson of mine is going to be spouting off about organised religion being bad without being able to pinpoint EXACTLY why he believes so with absurd accuracy. I may disagree or think he’s wrong, but by God he will be BRILLIANTLY wrong. If he’s anything like me he’ll be quoting Aquinas to his first grade teacher. Knowing him, he’ll be able to do it while juggling knives and chainsaws.

Also, being unable to pronounce my name correctly, I have been dubbed uncle manana. There is great debate as to what it is closer to. Man, Nana, Banana, a combination of all three? Regardless, my family’s tradition is that the person will be called whatever the first grandchild calls them. So I will now forever be uncle manana. I’m alright with that.