Yesterday was the Saturday I had been looking forward to for a while…taking one of my older nephews with me to all the favorite Austin-based hangouts of Uncle Steve, his geeky relative by marriage. Hunter has three other uncles who are pretty cool too. My short-term memory with those gentlemen is poor so I can only remember that one is a scout for the Houston Astros. I promise to take better notes on them to avoid future awkward meetings which will make me come off as rude.
Enough about me, it was Hunter’s day. Due to him living over in College Station (aka the Aggie Motherland), I don’t get to see him as much as I used to; his family moved away from nearby Georgetown when his dad (Aaron, Somara’s brother) accepted a new job. Somara’s upcoming surgery contributed to us missing out on Hunter’s recent birthday celebration(s) back in August too. However, his family was in the Austin area and I got to “borrow him” for an afternoon of sensory overload.
First stop was lunch at his (current) favorite place, Mighty Fine. He just turned 12 which means he’s getting to the age when young boys turn into bottomless pits, no more eating a few bites and calling it a day. Hunter’s team-school sport is swimming and if the stories about Michael Phelps’s consumption of 50,000 calories/day are at least half-true, our burgers and fries were just an appetizer.
Next was the primary destination I wanted him to see, Pinballz. We played a slew of machines, especially if it piqued his curiosity. He got me hooked on Twister (after the Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt movie about tornadoes, not the party game) which has this cool magnetic multi-ball schtick. Whenever I triggered a multi-ball, I quickly let him take over my game to enjoy pinball’s best feature over video games and I let him have the games I won via points, thankfully I was able to pull it off a couple of times! (Thank you Spider-Man for dropping your required score to five million right away!) Hunter was pretty stoked to win his first match game with Batman Forever.
With a few bucks in tokens saved for his next visit, we hit the biggest Nerdvana on the North Side, Dragon’s Lair. I would’ve preferred to take him to Rogue’s Gallery which is my comic book/game store but we had to keep moving south for our eventual rendezvous with his mom and grandma. The game side was a bit much, maybe in another year he’ll be interested. Pathfinder will have a basic set this Fall which I can give to him and the other kids to let them test the waters. The comics were a harder sell than I anticipated. I think he was a little intimidated by all the choices yet Hunter knows the difference between DC and Marvel; which superheroes belong to their proper universes. The other problem I think he was experiencing was trying to find a good, complete story. Most “long underwear” comic books have even slower paces than a TV soap opera. One issue doesn’t contain much, you usually need at least three to make any headway on where the plot might be going. We investigated the trade-paperbacks, usually reprints of past issues packaged into collections. No luck on finding Essential Avengers #1 to get him ready for next Spring’s big movie. The DC stuff was primarily from the Golden Age, rather confusing and “crappy looking” at his age. Then boom, I found Batman & the Outsiders Volume One. It remains a personal favorite to this day. I sold Hunter on it by explaining how Batman told the JLA to get lost in 1983 and formed a new team to fight bad guys like Kobra. Besides, the book covered the comic’s run from issue one through 17; Batman had a falling out with them by number 32; plus all the crossovers. Lastly, I gave him the Uncle Steve guarantee; if he bought it, read it and decided this totally sucked, I would refund his money. (His mother Anje will make sure to get his final opinion.)
Five PM was approaching and we arrived at the final stop, Waterloo Records! A couple of years ago, Hunter said he really liked the Beatles. Hence we (Somara and me) gave him the remastered boxed set of their catalog. It did seem a bit much to give a 10-year-old kid yet I felt that just giving him a couple CDs or an iTunes card was a half-assed measure. (Nowadays you can give somebody all seven Harry Potter books in a special collection thing, why should music be different?). Anyway, I scored new releases I knew I wanted and afterwards got Hunter some stuff to help him learn more about the bands he said he likes: new RHCP, their greatest hits with EMI, and Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. However, being a music fanatic I had to indulge…ok, impose…one selection on him. A Queen compilation, only because it was Freddie’s birthday last Monday.
Anje and Grandma showed around sixish. Hunter hopped in the car to read his new comic. I debriefed Anje on what a cool dude he was and our adventure, hoping we’ll get to do it again. She sent me a follow-up a couple of hours later telling me how stoked Hunter was over the afternoon; unlike other kids I know, he’s extremely quiet and I don’t have parental radar to gauge if he’s bored. I figured he was having a good time though. The harder trick for a DINK uncle like me to learn is to just let things happen, don’t keep trying to pry an opinion out of a kid, it makes you seem needy or odd.
Can’t wait to do this again (well, my wallet can). I’m also campaigning to get my brother’s oldest kid down to Austin for similar fun; fear not, the other children in my family won’t be ignored, they’re just not old enough yet. Short of being a kid-show host, the DINK and/or geek uncle role is pretty sweet when you have a Saturday like ours.