My Day With Addison

Yesterday I was all set to spend a couple hours of one-on-one time with my niece, Addison. When I showed up at her house she was literally running in a circle, telling me how excited she was to go on "an adventure." While that definitely upped the pressure to make the afternoon memorable, I just want to say it is really nice to walk into someplace and have there be someone there who is genuinely excited to see you. I gave Addison the choice of what we were doing with our day and she wanted to go bowling, so off we went as she yapped a mile a minute from the backseat: "Uncle Tommy your carseat has a cupholder, mine doesn't have that... Your car goes really fast [Editor's Note: I was not speeding at the time]... Look how spacious the back is..."

We got to the bowling alley, were set up with shoes and put in a lane with bumpers, but Addison still didn't quite make it to the pins with every throw. The lady behind the counter came out and told me that I was going to have to help her if we wanted to keep bowling. (It is at this point I feel the need to emphasis that there were a grand total of three people bowling at the time, so it's not like we were clogging the lanes.) Anyway, we ended up a with a system where she would use my arm and throw it, which meant I did 98% of the bowling and explains why my arm is killing me today. After a couple of frames Addison wanted candy and when you roll with Uncle Tommy there is no such word as no, so candy it was. This was a mistake because she would bowl, have some candy, bowl, have some more candy and eventually just wanted to skip the bowling part.

Everything was rolling along nicely until Addison declared she had to go to the bathroom. I was faced with a common dilemma that occurs when a guy is babysitting a little girl: whether to send the adult male into the ladies' room or the little girl into the men's room. I decided to go for the men's room and did a thorough sweep of the area that would have made the Secret Service proud. I was then guarding the stall when I had the following exchange:

Addison: I'm done.
Me: Ok. Did you clean up your... um... private... area?
Addison: Uncle Tommy, it's called a 'gina.

Seriously, this passes for normal for me now. How the hell did I get here?

Anyway, after bowling I was going to take her home, but Addison asked me what our next adventure was. Thinking on the fly I figured we would go up to Bass Pro shops and she could check out the large in-store fish tank, which is always a hit with her. But by the time we got to the last light to turn into the parking lot, Addison had had enough and just wanted to go home. I told her we could do that, but we were already there and we would be looking at this fish as soon as the light changed. This changed her mind and she sat quietly for a minute while waiting for the signal to turn before uttering, "How long is this light?" [Sidebar: does anyone know if the Twitter handle @ShitMyNiecesSay is taken yet?]

After we were in the store and had checked out the fishes, Addison proved the negotiating tactic of asking for something way more expensive than the thing you actually want is something people can be born with, because first she walked up to the very pricey deep-sea fishing rods and told me how much she would like of those. Since we're not about to go trolling for marlins anytime soon, I said no. But, she followed that up by asking for a $7 mermaid bathtoy. (Which would be the first thing her sister locked in on when she got home. As I told my sister, congratulations, I brought you home a fight.) Because I am easily manipulated by my nieces, that seemed like a bargain to me. Then, as we were heading for the exits a Bass Pro employee showed up with fish food and Addison got the fish jumping all over themselves and splashing as they went for the food. All in all it was a wonderful day and I accomplished my main goal which was returning Addison to her home with all her limbs still attached. Next time just remind me to bring some backup who can take her to the bathroom.