Little boys

Wouldn’t you know? My bar tab on Friday night totaled $78, and I can only count 2 free drinks. Which makes me wonder how at 5’4 I am able to put away $78 of liquor, not beer mind you – liquor. Perhaps those 12 step people could riddle me that.

Saturday night I promised my sister I would watch my nephews overnight. These little boys truly are the apples of my eye. I delight in everything they do, and constantly dote over them. I’ve always wanted to have a lots of little boys, which I suppose means that if I do have children they will be rotten little girls like me.

My 5-year-old nephew, I call him Boo, has been going through a tough time lately. He was recently ostracized from going to his cousin’s fairy party because he was a boy. This is absurd considering he normally wears unitards and sequins, or his mom’s alligator pumps. To boot, he’s extremely bright and was just diagnosis with a slight personality disorder. I bet he got that from me! Regardless he’s the kind of kid that loves drama camp, but hates any sports that doesn’t include tight pants. He’s loving and sweet one moment, and a complete terror the next minute like any other 5 year old kid.

I walked into the house Saturday afternoon nursing my hangover from the night before. I was a little apprehensive the boys would already be shouting in an attempt to see if Aunt NuNu’s (nice name for me, huh?) head would pop off. They were nowhere to be found. A couple of minutes later they showed up with their grandfather, who appeared to be a little disheveled and relieved to get rid of them.

The neighbor boys met up with us in the yard bearing 5 frogs. They had named each one of them with various Native American Indian names, like “Windborn”. Or so I thought. Turns out Windborn likes to be hurled into the air, and sometimes they even catch him. Lucky bastard.

So I sat in a chase lounge on my sister’s porch donning dark sunglasses and nursing a diet coke, watching 6 little boys squeeze and torture every frog they could get their little hands on. A minute later Boo tells me he’s put Dennis, his fighting fish, into a bucket with “Loves-to-jump” (more like, loves-to-be-thrown).

I leap from the lounge, run upstairs following the path of wet grass and mud to the bucket containing these two new friends. I look inside and see a petrified frog on one side of a stick, and a fish flopping around on the other side. Well I love boys, but I will not touch a frog or a fish. After rounding up all the boys, we managed to put the fish back into its original habitat and rescue the frog several times from my nephew’s closet.

At the end of the night the boys let the frogs go, so they can hunt for them the next day. Can you imagine the meetings the frogs in that neighborhood must have? “All right guys, you’ve heard about those Smith boys on Aztec Falls. They’re onto us. They know we’ve been hiding out in the sprinkler systems, and they’ve already killed Frankie.”

The neighbors went home, and my nephews and I were sitting around talking about dinner. I started to wonder if Boo would change into one of those macho boys he was playing with earlier. Would nightly theatre be gone? Would he stop watching musicals with his favorite Auntie? Is he going to hang up his tutu for football pads? I’d miss his rendition of the Nutcracker.

I was looking out the window asking them where they wanted to have our celebratory dinner (Boo learned to whistle that day), when he looked at me and said “The dinning room of course! I’ll get the tablecloth and china!” I smiled and gave him a wink.