We celebrated our nephew Connor’s 10th birthday in a time-honored East Texas manner: grilling hamburgers, pitching washers — and plinking balloons and Diet Coke cans with pellet guns. The clan sat outside on a Saturday afternoon enjoying a rare respite from the incessant rains.
Since the party was at our house in a quiet subdivision, we had to settle for pellet guns and leave the heavy ordnance in the gun safes. Previous family get-togethers out in the country have allowed us to indulge in another Pine Curtain tradition: Blowing Stuff Up.
My wife’s kinfolk are fond of Tannerite, a legal and reasonably safe way to create an impressive explosion. Fill a small jug with this stuff, set it on a barrel, make sure everybody is at least 30 yards away, and fire a round into the jug. A .22 rifle is sufficient. The resulting blast satisfies this primal urge with little collateral damage, except to the barrel. We have also happily blasted away with semi-automatic weapons at cans and other targets. This is a safety-conscious group, so there is no danger of injury.
Plinking with a pellet gun provides a quieter pleasure and keeps the neighbors from calling the law. I built a wooden stand on which to pin the inflated balloons. The balloons were all gone before Connor’s enthusiasm had waned, so I rummaged through the recycling bin to grab some aluminum cans. We cranked up the Dale Watson channel on Pandora and batted away mosquitoes as Connor and Abbie took turns plinking cans.
Connor is 100-percent boy. His birthday gifts this year included a large knife with a serrated blade. The top of the handle screws off, and inside is a compass, a sewing kit, matches and some flint. When I was 10, a present like this — which cost less than $15 at Harbor Freight — would have put me in pure bliss. He also received a baseball glove and ball, a couple DVDs, a book and a pair of foam nunchucks. Concerning the latter, it is a bit early for him to have the real thing.
Connor sports blond hair with blue eyes, a sweet smile, and possesses the most serious demeanor of any child I have met. He has been that way since I first met him seven years ago, nearly always choosing his words carefully to explain something or ask a question. And he asks some serious questions, often of a metaphysical nature — the kind adults wrestle with all their lives. He possesses a command of the language far beyond his years, and like his parents is an avid reader.
He calls my wife “Aunt Hiss.” This did not come about because my wife hisses at the child. As a toddler, Connor heard his dad call her “Sissa.” Connor could not quite pronounce that word so it became “hiss,” and thus Aunt Hiss. She likely will always be Aunt Hiss to Connor.
Connor stays with us often on weekends and during the summer, because he loves hanging out with his older cousin Abbie, who is unfailingly kind to him. He sleeps on a pallet in her bedroom, and they watch Pokemon movies together — even though Abbie at 17 has long outgrown that genre. Connor is low-maintenance, happy with a bowl of mac-and-cheese, some chicken nuggets and some “green juice,” aka 7 Up. Our dogs Sam and Rosie adore him, of course, and bookend him on the couch as he plays his Gameboy or reads a book.
Watching Connor grow from barely past the toddler stage to the cusp of adolescence has been a joy. I look forward to watching him develop into a fine young man. And he is going to be one heckuva marksman by then.
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