Uncle Mike

Uncle Mike is my godfather. He was one of my favorite people when I was growing up, always being the jokester and goofball in the room. He would always give me noogies or ask me how baseball and hockey were going. He was the uncle who was always throwing the football around with me and my cousins. My Uncle Mike and my Aunt Anne would come down from Rochester a few times a year to visit, but one year my Aunt Anne and my cousins, their kids, didn’t come down with him. A year later they were divorced. I began to see my uncle less and less, with him only coming down to visit once or twice a year and bringing a new girlfriend every time he visited. He still got me Christmas and birthday presents every year, but most of my memories of him, the good ones anyways, are from when I was younger. This past year, he came down for Labor Day to visit and spend some time with everyone. A group of us decided to go golfing due to the fact that a bunch of our family were in town. My Uncle Mike’s natural habitat is probably the golf course, and even though he isn’t a great golfer, he loves to drink. For some people, golf is a way to get exercise, enjoy the outdoors, and compete in a sport that they enjoy. Many people who don’t golf view it this way. However, like my uncle Mike, the golf course is a lot different the more you get to know it. The course is a place where there is a lot of drinking and gambling. There’s a lot of trash talking and inappropriate jokes and a lot of guys will talk in ways they would never talk around their wives. After golfing, we had a little get together at my parents’ house. I had the opportunity to introduce my Uncle Mike to my girlfriend for the first time. He then proceeded to make a joke saying to her, “Are you sure he isn’t gay? I thought he was gay.” I got that he was joking and so did my girlfriend, but he continued on with it, even bringing it back up to my girlfriend an hour later. My Uncle Mike has always done this kinda stuff and said things like this, but this time it really made everyone uncomfortable. In the same night he also proceeded to say to my other uncle, “You must be a democrat and a Biden supporter since you’re such a wuss,” to try and pick on him and also proceeded to slap my cousin’s ass and tell her there was a bug on it. Apparently he has done it in the past. Growing up, I loved my Uncle Mike to death. Now, I still love him, but I realize that, like a golf course, he’s a lot different, the more you get to know him. It’s crazy how you think of people so differently when you are younger and you don’t realize what they’re actually like until you’re mature enough to understand what is going on.

I feel like this is a good representation of everyone’s journey through adolescence. When we are younger we see things differently. It’s almost like we see the PG version of everything because that is how your brain processes things when you are younger. As you grow older and grow in maturity you begin to learn more and pick up on a lot of things that you wouldn’t have when you were younger. When I was a child my view of my Uncle Mike was all good natured. I didn’t see him getting drunk and being inappropriate, I saw him as my fun, goofy Uncle Mike who liked to tease me. As I began to mature I slowly began to realize more and more what kind of guy he is, and the kind of stuff he has gone through. I begin to see the truth about him. If someone tried to talk badly about him when I was younger I would’ve defended him because, from my perspective, he was a perfect uncle. It’s really eye-opening to think about and it greatly represents the journey from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood.

Post By: Carson A. Zaremski