Uncles

We call him Uncle Bony because he's a bonehead. Even when he was young, he had wrinkles around his eyes from laughing. He wears cowboy boots with his bathrobe. He's a master of funny noises and lame jokes. Uncle Bony has invented several games, including but not limited to Fantasy Sumo and a checkers-like game played with pennies. He is a treasure trove of obscure niche information (not unlike Cliff from Cheers). My highly erudite, law professor dad acts like a sophomore when Uncle Bony is around. Because of Bony, my dad maintains a variety of absurd habits like calling the TV remote "the calculator." Uncle Bony can't have coffee anymore because he gets overexcited.

When I was a kid, we'd visit Uncle Bony and Aunt Marianne several times a year. We'd drive to Ohio and spend a whole day in King's Island, or at Put-In Bay learning about local wildlife. Or they'd come to our house, and we'd scour the beach in search of the World's Smoothest Rock (a game we continue to this day with Bony's grown children and other relatives).

But Uncle Bony, whose children I've been raised with, whose wife played Barbies with me, who attended my wedding, who we see regularly despite living across state lines, is not my uncle at all. He's one of my dad's fraternity brothers.

Today, my husband and I are visiting Purdue's campus again for his fraternity's annual Hog Roast. I'm a vegetarian, it's raining, and my favorite fellow wife is absent, but it's okay. Eight years after my husband pledged, his brothers are mine. They sleep on our floors and couches, and we sleep on theirs. We drive hours just to spend the day bar-hopping in Grand Rapids, or just playing games and enjoying each other's company in Fort Wayne. We've stood up in each other's weddings and been there through break-ups, failed classes, major changes, coming outs, moves and job applications.

This isn't the family I was born with, and it wasn't the family I chose, but it's the family that came with my husband, complete with their own silly nicknames (the origins of which are closely guarded fraternity secrets). Someday, our children will have uncles called Merc, Blue, Sizlak, and Artoo. Uncles who have taught us our own share of bad habits and sophomoric behavior, and who never let something as silly as distance, work, or rain get in the way of a good time.