Cool kids

I became an uncle when I was eight and thought it was the grandest thing in the world. I adored my niece. For a long time I think I looked forward more to having children than to being married. Kids were great. Later I taught a fifth-grade Sunday school class for several years and thought that was grand, too.

I haven't been around children much in recent years, with two delightful exceptions named Addi and Olivia. One of the happiest things about the church where I'm an intern now is the wonderful kids there, and it's been a lot of fun getting to know them and finding that I can still connect. I had lunch at the pastor's house Sunday. When I walked in, a woman from the church said, "The Paul Buckley Fan Club is downstairs." She was talking about Yasmina and Olivia and Ethan. So I descended the staircase to the dungeon -- everyone around here says "basement" -- and toured their fort, a handsome pavilion of straight chairs and bedsheets. They also had an assembly of rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and the like that you would envy if you saw it. They had musical instruments, too, and together we performed a setting of "Silent Night" for four voices, cymbals, one maraca, and a pterodactyl. (Cymbals on downbeats, maraca on upbeats.)

It's good to be hobnobbing again with people who can appreciate these finer things.