Jake’s Special Day

My awesome nephew, Jake

Today Kris, Bun, and I took Jake out for a “special day”–and Sophie tagged along.

It was such a pretty day, a cool, fall-y day. Bun and I got over to Kris’s house at about 10, and Kris and the kids were out in the yard. Immediately, Sophie and Jake wanted to show us the scooter routines they’d developed. Jake went down the driveway with one arm in the air, then turned onto the sidewalk and executed a series of jumps. He ended with a flourish, pulling his scooter into the air and swinging it around.

“You weren’t watching, Leslie,” Jake said, smiling. “I saw you writing in your diary.”

“Uh,” I said, “I was not writing in my diary. I think you saw me getting out my camera. I was trying to take a picture of you.”

“You were writing in your diary,” he smiled. “I saw you.”

We decided we’d go to the Halloween Spirit store first. That would be our first stop on Jake’s special day. Then we’d have lunch and go bowling.

It took a minute to get going because Sophie and Jake were fighting and chasing each other around the yard. Sophie was yelling at Jake: “See, Turdface!” Turdface is her new favorite word, apparently.

We drove over to Halloween Spirit. Jake had been there before and wanted to lead Bunny and me on a tour of the store’s scariest offerings.

“Do you like Regan, Leslie?” Jake asked as we walked into the store.

“Um, who’s Regan?”

“Do you like The Exorcist?”

“Uh, no. I can say that with certainty.”

“I do. It is not very scary. It’s not all that scary. Regan’s in The Exorcist.”

And then we were standing in front of a life-size Regan animatronic. Jake pushed a button and her head spun around.

“That’s disgusting,” I said.

“It’s not all that scary,” Jake said, shrugging. Of course, this was just a brave front Jake was putting on. Jake is always scared.

He showed us a bunch of animatronics: A man being eaten alive by a giant rat was probably the grossest. He also pointed out a bunch of zombie babies riding on merry-go-round swings. One of the babies was eating its own foot.

Sophie was being so dumb. She’s always trying to be funny, testing out new “material.” There was a play phone that played lines from Scream. Sophie kept picking up the phone and doing these ridiculous comedy routines. These days she talks like the misfit jack-in-the-box, Charlie in the Box, from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the old Christmas TV special. She kept answering the phone in her Charlie-in-the-Box voice, saying, “Hello? What? . . . It’s for you. . . .” And other such nonsense.

Jake, meanwhile, was all business. Kris told the kids they could pick out their Halloween costumes, and Jake was dead set on being Carver the Clown. He went in the dressing room and tried on the costume. He came out looking truly terrifying. The black satin clown suit had ruffles and a skull pattern and skull-shaped buttons down the front. The big rubber mask was horrifying, surrounded by an orange afro.

“Are you sure about this, Jake?” I asked.

“Yes, I am sure.”

Sophie tried on a “Sweet and Sexy Vampire” costume. She actually fit in a costume labeled “small adult,” which was ridiculous because Sophie is tiny. Sophie thought she looked awesome. The costume consisted of a red satin mini dress with a lace-up bodice and bell sleeves made of black tulle.

Sophie looked so cute in her costume. It made me feel sorry for Jake in his horrible Carver the Clown outfit.

Carver the Clown was an adult costume, so Bun went into the kids’ section and found a few cuter, sweeter, safer alternatives.

She chose a cute, hilarious “taco” costume, then went to see if she could interest Jake in it. Jake was off somewhere by himself, pushing buttons, terrifying himself with animatronics.

“How’d it go?” I asked when Bun came back.

“He punched me,” Bun reported, laughing.

Then she chose a cute ketchup bottle costume and tried again.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“He punched the costume this time.”

Of course Jake was smiling shyly when he was punching. He’s shy around Bunny and me. I think we embarrass him lots of times.

“Let’s go to the Magic and Fun Shop,” Kris proposed when we were done trying on costumes. “Doesn’t that sound fun, Jake?”

“No, Mommy,” Jake said. (I think he was scared to go to the Magic and Fun Shop.) “I do not want to go to the Magic and Fun Shop. I think I’m hungry. And I think we don’t have that much time.” He was coming up with every excuse in the book.

“I want to go to the Magic and Fun Shop!” Sophie cried. (I don’t know why she thought she could weigh in on Jake’s special day, but she did.) “If we’re not going, then drop me off at Hum’s!”

“Jake doesn’t want to go,” Kris sighed. “So we’ll have to drop you off, I guess.”

“Do you want to go have our lunch now?” I asked Jake. We had talked about having a picnic. “What would you like to get for our picnic? Do you want to have a picnic?”

“Well, I don’t really want to get eaten by bugs,” Jake replied cheerfully. “And I don’t really like sitting in grass.”

“We could sit at a picnic table,” Bunny suggested.

“Um, I think it’s kind of windy today,” Jake said in his cheerful way. He was grasping at straws. It was not windy. “It would be kind of bad if our food blew away.”

I smiled: “So you’d prefer to eat in a restaurant? Is that what I’m hearing?”

Jake nodded cheerfully. He decided we should go to Red Elephant, which has a game room, conveniently enough.

We tried to drop Sophie off at Mom’s, but Mom wasn’t there.

“I don’t want to go to Red Elephant!” Sophie cried. “I don’t want to eat pizza.”

“Well,” I said, “You don’t have to eat pizza. I’m sure Bunny has an orange in her purse. You can just sit there and eat your orange and read and pretend you’re not even with us. Here, you can read this.” I handed her a booklet from one of Jake’s video games. (She threw it back at me, trying not to smile.)

We had a total feast at Red Elephant, and it was all Bunny’s doing. I just loved how enthusiastic she was being. “I’m ordering an appetizer,” she announced. “I’m ordering everything I want. I don’t care. I’m going for it.” And we all followed suit.

We ordered Coke and root beer, hot boiled peanuts, and cheese pizza. Jake got a cheeseburger and fries, Sophie got chicken strips and fries, Bun and I got hummus wraps and fries, and the kids ordered elephant ears for dessert. The fries were amazing. They were perfectly cooked, surrounded by puffy golden batter.

Jake was being so great. He ordered honey-mustard dipping sauce for his fries. He was happily dipping his fries in, then gesturing with them (enthusiastically), and accidentally flipping dipping sauce across the table. There was honey-mustard dipping sauce on everybody’s shirt. Oh, it was a glorious, messy feast.

Jake made only brief appearances at the table, though they were happy, enthusiastic ones. He’d come and take a bite of his burger, flip some dipping sauce around, then run off to play another game in the game room. He was so excited, he was all out of breath, and it was so adorable I felt like crying. I hope he never loses his enthusiasm for life.

Kris was worried about Jake playing games then touching his hamburger. “Use the hand sanitizer,” she said.

“No,” Jake objected. “Then my hamburger will taste like ham sanitizer!”

“Hee hee,” Kris chuckled. “Ham sanitizer . . .”

“I meant ‘hand sanitizer’!” Jake cried. “. . . Leslie, are you writing that down? Don’t write it! Stop!” He was laughing. He’s so cute, with his big smile and far-apart teeth.

We sat at the table, surrounded by glasses of Coke. (We were all completely wasted on Coke; we really took advantage of our free refills.) Then the much-anticipated elephant-ear dessert arrived, and it did not disappoint. The elephant ears were huge, and piping hot. They were so dang buttery, topped with cinnamon and powdered sugar. They were not vegan, surely, but I had a piece anyway. “Oh, my God,” I said. “This is sheer heaven.”

The delicate pastry was dripping with hot melted butter. It was so good, so warm, so comforting.

Our next stop was the bowling alley, Capital Lanes. Jake couldn’t wait to go bowling, and he couldn’t wait to play laser tag and all the other available games.

Jake hasn’t been bowling all that often in his life, and he was amazed by the shiny floor. “Mommy, do they put butter on it to make it slippery?” he asked, sincerely boggled.

“No,” Kris smiled, “I think they use wax.”

I was laughing at Sophie in her little rented striped bowling shoes. I couldn’t believe fussy Sophie was willing to wear rented shoes. Kris said she thought Sophie didn’t know other people wore them. “She probably thinks they’re disposable,” she said, rolling her eyes.

I was wearing my bowling shoes with a dress, which was fun because I love looking absurd. I bowled terribly, of course, and came in last place after a long series of gutter balls.

Jake had the most awesome, hilarious bowling style. The ball was so heavy for him. He’d get a running start, and he’d try to roll the ball, but he’d really just sort of throw it. It didn’t go very far, so it was more like dropping it, I guess. The ball would land with a big thud and roll very slowly toward the pins.

Jake did some very flamboyant celebrating every time he knocked a pin over.

About midway through our bowling game, Jake started to get antsy about playing laser tag. So we kind of rushed through our bowling so we could move on to tag. Sophie won; she’s a pretty awesome bowler I’ve got to say.

The laser tag was really fun. The laser tag room is pure dark with a glow-in-the-dark maze and dance music blaring. Though Bun, Kris, and I are full-grown ladies, we were running and screaming and laughing hysterically. Jake, meanwhile, was hiding and sneaking and methodically shooting us. He was so serious. Sophie was raving. I liked shooting her when she was in the middle of a particularly flamboyant dance move. By the end of the game, we were all out breath and so red in the face. My stomach hurt from laughing.

“Well, Jake,” I said, “I can see now why you couldn’t wait to play laser tag. That was awesome.”

Kris wanted to start bowling again right after our laser tag game . . . because we’d rented our lane for two hours and she wanted to get our money’s worth.

Well, Jake didn’t like that. He felt hemmed in. He wanted to be free to run around and explore the game room, etc. He didn’t want to get all caught up in another protracted game of bowling.

“Mommy,” he said, “I might bowl a little out of curiosity, but I’m not going to finish a whole game!”

I loved that. I knew exactly what he meant by “bowling out of curiosity.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I think that’s a good idea. I’ll just be bowling out of curiosity, too.”

And so we bowled and Bunny and I asked the kids annoying questions about school. Example: We kept asking Jake who his girlfriend was and what she was like.

We got a free bucket of popcorn and pitcher of Sierra Mist with our bowling game. Kris let Jake pour the Sierra Mist into the lightweight Styrofoam cups we were given; she let him pour for everybody because it was his special day. Jake is such an adorable spazz; he tried so hard, but there was Sierra Mist all over the bowling alley by the time he was done. We were all soaking wet. It was great. It just made our stay at the bowling alley more festive, to have Sierra Mist flowing everywhere.

We spent the last part of our day in the game room at the bowling alley. Jake was in a frenzy. He was so excited, and he wanted to play every game, so he was playing really fast, running from game to game and quickly swiping his game card, almost in a panic. I guess he was worried he wouldn’t get to every game, or that we’d make him leave. He was worried he’d be thwarted somehow. And so he ran from game to game, madly swiping.

“Okay,” Kris said to me, watching, rolling her eyes, “so we’re going to play this fast. . . .”

“Remember how he used to be when he was little?” I said.

“Yeah,” Kris said, “I remember once we were at the Fun Station, and he was probably three. He was running so the air was parting his bangs down the middle, and he was crying and falling down, trying to get to every machine.”

“He couldn’t handle it,” I said.

“He couldn’t handle it.”

I felt sorry for Jake that he didn’t trust us, that he thought we’d make him leave. I felt sorry for him that he couldn’t just relax and play. He and Sophie played skeeball, Dance, Dance Revolution, and Jumpin’ Jackpot. And then they counted up all the tickets they had won and traded them in for prizes. They got several plastic spider rings. Jake also chose a glow stick and a Chinese finger trap.

Kris muttered to me, “Oh, boy, a Chinese finger trap. This ought to be interesting.”

Jake kept getting stuck in the finger trap. I mean, absolutely stuck, to the point of panic. He couldn’t do anything because he was trapped. At one point, he ran up to Kris, completely stuck. “Mommy,” he cried, “get me out! I’ve still got 30 cents on my game card! I want to put it in the candy machine!”

I loved the way he was yelling at Kris—like she was the dumb one and not him, who was stuck in his own Chinese finger trap.

It was just so funny to look across the room every once in a while. You’d see Sophie playing with her spider rings and Jake stuck in the finger trap . . . again.