An uncle's father's day wishes

Distributed to a circle of fathers with consolation-advanced warnings of my personal experiments with Darwin's theories...


My practice of tutoring young nephews with a curriculum perfected via exchanges on carpool travel with 4yr old nephew Nick “the iceman” Compton (under supervision of his dubious but enthusiastic mother Eileen) has traveled with me to Rhode Island for the summer. I have found a most receptive pupil in 13yr old nephew Sean Buckley [as yet no handle, but his insatiable fascination with Cosmology and dark energy has great potential]. When I left Austin, Nick was still on track towards "his" dream/career path as a professional surfer- destination Hawaii. To which, I’ve added the more “practical" embellishment of possible night-time employ as the only Zamboni driver on the big island – hence the iceman moniker.

While watching a news segment showing massive flows of hot red lava erupting from an active volcano in Hawaii, I shared Nick’s career plans with his cousin Sean- suggesting we immediately get on the net to forward this suggestion to Nick: that he explore the possibilities of lava surfing with his mom.

When that project lost steam, I instead recruited Sean to Google relevant key words to locate a rink on any of the Hawaiian Islands.Yes, there is one, in fact, Sean was able to show me a complete schedule of free skating time etc. Alas, no links or reference to open positions at the rink were found...

After stroking Sean for his complicity to perpetuate and reinforce the career development of his young cousin Nick, I seized the opportunity to coax Sean into a little lesson in the subtle art of sarcastic wit – an art so adorable in [and soon to be cherished by] this ever-active adolescent mind.

After repeatedly thanking Sean for his efforts to locate an ice rink on the big island I introduced him to the possibility of the response “it was the least I could do” followed by the line: “if I could have done less I would have!”

Sean only took a few seconds to chew this one over and after putting some question over cosmology on the back burner lit up with a grin and was off to the races- he now needs only minor prompting from his mentor uncle jonnie to launch his new gimmick upon most unsuspecting victims.


The attached photo depicts the warm glow of satisfaction over a most effective execution of this new routine by Sean after he was reluctantly dragged from his computer by his Nana [my mom] into a somewhat orchestrated presentation of birthday cake and lit candles to an equally reluctant uncle johnnie…The icing on the cake and opportunity for Sean’s performance is appropriately captured by the photo “insisted” upon by my Mom – to which Sean on cue replied to his Nana “It’s the least I could do…followed with a barely audible" if I could have done less…".I supplemented his comment with a manual, and strained visual representation of just how little he would have preferred to have done in this instance