Whatever Happened to Baby Richie?

I was talking to my sister a few days ago and we were discussing my favorite holiday, Halloween. It's gay Christmas, and anyone who thinks otherwise should be tied to a tree and beaten with braided chicken wire. Sis says that my nephew is torn between Batman and Captain Jack Sparrow, which is weird because last Tuesday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

My sister went on to describe how my nephew took items from around the house to convince her how much he could pull off being a pirate. He put a pair of his underwear over his head to use it as bandana. Then he took the top of his crayola crayon coin bank and put his foot in it to use it as a peg leg. To finish it off, he held a wooden spoon in one hand and a plastic coat hanger in the other to use as a sword and a hook. He kept going up to her and saying "aaarggh!"

Instead of being amused and proud that my three-year-old nephew was being creative and funny, I was filled with a little bit of doubt. How can a little boy be so clever? After hearing about the simulated peg leg, I got a little jealous.

I was the clever one in the family! I was the one who modded the fans in our house to make them spin faster. I was the one who wrote a report about Indians in the fourth grade and got an F because we were told to write about "Indians" (native Americans). I was the one who put a series of mirrors on chairs so that I could watch television from the other room while washing the dishes in the kitchen. Now I'm just a 27 year old, stale has-been who clings to old memories of his superstar childhood the way that my ex boyfriends cling to the notion that they were better at sex than I was.

I can just picture myself in thirty years, dressed in my old child pageant robes and serving dead rats to my nephew who is in a wheelchair because I got drunk one night and ran him over with my car.

I guess it's silly of me to be jealous of a kid. He actually is very cute and I'm very proud of how clever he is becoming. I can't be the cute one in the family anymore, so I'll just have to settle for cultivating the cuteness that blooms in the other generations. I'll be standing in the shadows with my martini glass, muttering to myself that one day my nephew will have children who will be even more clever than he used to be. HA HA HA!