Tuesday, January 02, 2007

They call me the Dude

If you're trying to get my attention I answer to three names. You can call me Kubota, sometimes Bobby, or Jason, or you can call out "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!"

At least that's what my three-year-old nephew calls me. When he comes over to visit on Sundays I know when he's there when he pounds on my door and hollers "Dude! Come play!" or "Dude! What are you doing in there!?!"

The name has been following me around for maybe two years now, and it got started completely by accident. Schyler (my nephew) was starting to learn his first words with mama and dada and all that jazz and everybody in my family was trying to teach him how to say their name. I'm a bit of an idealist, and I thought doing that was a tad bit conceited, so I decided instead to sit him down and teach him his first word that he could actually use. So I sat down with him and a couple matchbox cars (his favorite toy) and got started.

"Dude"

It didn't really register to him at first, but we worked on it for a couple weekends and he started saying it on his own. Then one day we were sitting at the dinner table and we were trying to get him to say all of our names: Mom, dad, then he stumbled through Sharlee and Chris, then Momo and Popo (which means grandma and grandpa when you're not even two) and then his mom pointed at me.

"DUDE!"

"No," I say to him, pointing to myself, "I'm Uncle Jason."

He shakes his head at me, "Dude!"

And thus I have been known as Dude ever since. I didn't mean for him to associate the word with me when I first taught it to him, but it stuck, and now I'm Uncle Dude, and it isn't likely to change. When he would visit my parents and I was away at school he would open the door to the basement and yell "Dude!" to see if I was there.

It's not going to go away, either. Now everybody in the family refers to me as Uncle Dude around my nephews, so it's likely to carry on through all of my future nieces and nephews. Schyler has just recently figured out that I have a different name when somebody asked him "Who's Jason?" and he answered correctly for the first time "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!"

I guess being called Uncle Dude is far better than Uncle Lazy Bastard. So I wont complain.

1 comment:

littlemissme said...

Dude, you are so cute.