A bowlful of Bobs

In which our Hero does the rope-a-dope with a baby determined to grab his glasses.

So it’s been long enough, Gentle Reader, that it probably would hurt for me to remind you that a long time ago I called a baby who wasn’t named Bob “Bob,” which made him suddenly and profoundly burst into tears, leading to a running gag between the boy, his younger cousin, and me, who now all call each other Bob to our own great amusement.

The young Bobs are all characters. They will stop and talk to anybody and I guess being the youngest-by-a-decade in their respective families has made them get a very different growing up experience because they’re very comfortable talking to adults in a way I don’t think any of the other kids have been. You can find them in the dictionary under handsome rogues, up to gentle trouble and sweetly smiling their way out of it.

Bob the younger is a particular devil. He likes me, for no reason I can think of having given him (except possibly that I didn’t say an outright no when he asked me to teach him how to make explosives when he was a young lad of seven or eight (as opposed to his world-weary ten years now)). Which is how he was sitting with me for a bit, talking about turning ten over his cup of cola with the same melancholy that I’ve seen in people turning 40. (No, not me, I’m having my crisis now. By the time I’m 40 it’s going to rock).

I like him too. His sense of humour is fairly unique, and it results in things that I would teach my kids to do. Like the “Feedback” thank-you-card he gave me a few New-Year’s-Party’s ago. Or the orange I pulled out of the fruit bowl a few days after he’d visited, with another note written on the peel to his aunt, my mother. It’s sweet, it’s charming, and I can totally imagine the effect it’ll have when years from now, he leaves a thoughful gourd-o-gram for his someone special to discover while he’s away on business.

He was very happy to see me on the weekend, at our nephew’s birthday party. He’d been assembling a black-and-decker kid’s-scaled (and plastic) work bench, and I guess he needed a consult. Oven, the birthday boy, was probably the most vocal I’ve ever seen him. Playing with everything and anything, being a tyrant over his toys.

To my great amusement, Oven’s grandmother walked by, saw me, and handed me his little brother, Fridge. “Here. You stay with Serin-uncle, he doesn’t get to hold you much.” And left. Frankly, I was expecting tears but he was in a particularly good mood for someone up so far past his bed time. It’s funny how much his face changes. Just like his brother, he goes back and forth between resembling a side of the family, but in any case, he’s a gorgeous baby.

Meanwhile another toddler was calling from the next landing on the stairs, and we were all trying to figure out what she was saying when suddenly she started calling my name along with the other word. And that was illuminating because a) that baby doesn’t really know my name, despite the time we’ve spent together and b) I was mildly miffed that she was using the wrong title.

When I was very small, it was just the bunch of us kids, all around an age, and calling each other by name. And it was a few years before there were significantly younger kids who were related and that was when they first tried teaching the kids to use a title with me. And I hated it. I mean, seriously, profoundly, violently hated it. Like the song said, “That’s not my name.”

It wasn’t till my twenties that my resistance really eroded. Some imports addressed me with titles, and I didn’t fight as hard because it actually made *them* uncomfortable to *not* use the title. And then Mouse and Moonbeam cuted me into submission, to the point that I miss the variant name they gave me as babies.

And now, I was feeling the impulse to teach this little girl the right title (because she’s not her mom, except then I laughed at myself for caring at all and went to have a slice of monkey birthday cake). Which means I guess it just took another two decades to figure out that I like the affection and respect of the titles.

I’d call it a highly successful party. A small group, a lazy pace, happy babies and good eats. Really, if I could just have had Nocturne there to join me playing with Fridge, it’d have been perfect.