Remember Your Uncles

My Dad's brother asked me to post this, so here it is.


Touched by an Uncle
On Thanksgiving, Pause to Remember Your Uncles
Uncles are a dying breed.

Today's male siblings—brothers, they're called—are tomorrow's uncles. But Americans are having ever-smaller families. Most couples aspire to have one child, maybe two. So the uncle—that non-authority figure, that often drunk, childish, pseudo adult—is going extinct.

Growing up I had a dozen uncles by blood and marriage. My kid only has three uncles. When my son is an adult, he will likely marry someone who is also an only child, and their children—or their only child—won't have any uncles at all.

So it is only fitting that we pause on Thanksgiving to remember our uncles—good, bad, drunk, sober, morose, helpful, molestful, homicidal—because it was the one day a year when you could count on seeing your uncles. But soon we will live in a world without uncles, so it's important that we write down our uncle stories now, while we still can, while uncles still walk the earth. DAN SAVAGE

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=25351

The stories aren't so heart-warming.
Not like the kind that would warm your shack on a cold November night.
Uncles always seemed to me to be those "extra" people on this Earth.
Until I became one, that is. Then they seemed to serve more of a purpose.