Reply #29: My Mississippi nephew, who taught me there's hope for the planet.

[Fly by night]

My nephew Ben just turned 18. For a month, my brother and sister-in-law kept asking him what he wanted for that milestone birthday and he kept telling them "Nothing. I have everything I want."

Well, they kept after him until finally, on a Sunday morning that was the big (birth)day, he answered them by saying, "I have a retarded high school classmate who has worn the same shoes to school for the past three years. For my birthday, I would like to buy him a pair of new shoes."

As if that wasn't enough, I learned (when I drove to Mississippi to be in his presence at his high school graduation) that he had broken up with a new girlfriend because she insisted on having sex with him and he had no interest whatsoever in doing that. When I asked him about that, he said "Uncle Bernie, all my classmates keep saying that they're in love, which is just an excuse to fuck each other. High school kids are too young to know what love means -- I know I am."

Finally, on his graduation day, he kept teasing his parents that (like many of his classmates), he was going to put some rude saying on the top of his mortarboard for all the assembled to see. He had gone through the wringer with his baseball coach (who is one testicle short of a full bag) and Ben had joked with his parents that he was going to put "Bye bye, one nut!" on his mortarboard.

I was sitting next to his mother when he walked out in front of 6,000+ people assembled for the graduation and -- sure enough -- he had something written on his mortarboard.

It was "I LOVE MOM."

I pulled him aside after graduation and told him that he already had the world figured out and to just try to keep believing the things he knew to be true at that moment, and acting on his beliefs. And for his graduation, I gave him pictures of his great-grandparents on their wedding day, which had been a gift to me three decades earlier from my "nana" before she died. I told him the gift was from both me and her, and that he made us both proud to be related to him.