I asked my nephew, Drew, what he wanted to do for his belated seventh birthday, which was June 19 — sometimes Aunties run a bit behind.
I asked him if he wanted to have a Drew/Aunt Janet birthday date. He answered succinctly, “Sure.”
Sheepishly grinning when we walked to my car, I exuberantly said, “Well, you have a decision to make, do you want to:
1. Go to the Johnson County fair
2. Go to the zoo
3. Go to a movie
4. Go go-carting in Whiteland
5. Go to my house and play games and finish the last 30 minutes of a Tarzan movie we didn’t finish.
6. Go to the pet store
7. Go to Target and buy a toy
8. Go to Uncle Steve’s office and dance in front of the bay window to distract his patients
9. Locate your Dad’s work truck and toilet paper it.”
He chose games at my house. We played a big game of Go Fish — the cards were actually 10.5 inches by 14.5 inches. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Drew balanced the bottom of the cards, which were chest-high on him, on the floor. He beat me seven matches to six. I appreciated his gigantic card-playing hints. Instead of arranging my in-hand cards numerically, he suggested I “just flip through them like a bunch of gift cards.”
Moving on to Connect Four, he won three games and I won two. In my defense, he kept distracting me saying, “Hey, you better not put your circle there,” using his 7-year-old reverse psychology techniques.
I earned an Aunty-fail by not being able to hook up Mario Kart on the big screen, but the iPhone Mario game sufficed.
When I told him thanks for hanging out with me, he beamed. “Yeah, I didn’t have to do my chores today — folding the laundry and taking out the trash — Raegan had to do it,” he said.
We finished celebrating seven, by doing No. 7 on the list and having dinner with Uncle Steve and cousin Alex at Don Cuervo.
The youngest of five siblings, Drew can hold his own with his quick wit. But he reminded me of his young, endearing heart late in the day when he asked me, “Do you think my mom is home?”
“Yes Drew, I believe she is, why?” I said.
“I miss her,” he replied. [We called her.]
