Unclehood

I recently congratulated a single friend of mine when she became an aunt for the first time. I know when my younger brother and his wife had their first child it meant I would never feel pressure to produce an heir. Funny enough, my brother initially wanted to name the boy "John" in honor of our father (I'm John Jr.) but decided against it. "I saved it for you," he said.

Ha!

I suspect that if I ever marry it will be to a woman who had children the first time around and I'll content myself with being a step-dad. And the kids will have to content themselves with the fact that I'm not the cool beer-drinking-buddy step-dad they hoped for. They also better not come to me looking for hyphens because I'm all out now.

Rest assured that in the unlikely event I father children and in the even slimmer chances that there is a John III among them, he will not be nicknamed Trey, Tri, Tripp or any other variation of the theme. I read that the golfer Davis Love III continued the line with his son and calls him "Dru" for quaDRUple. If the trend goes two more generations, does that kid go through life with everyone calling him "Sex"?

(Pause to give you the opportunity to judge whether there was a joke there. And, if so, what it was.)

The best thing about auntie or uncle-hood is that when the baby smells like it needs a diaper change, you hand it back to its parents and let them handle it. Not all parents believe that their spawn ever stinks, though. Once when "Almost John" and his younger brother started acting up I offended my brother when I left the room. I probably didn't have to cite "my allergy to children" as the reason.

I better be careful. I'm running dangerously low on quotation marks now, too.