My four year old nephew, the real James Nixon, knows more than the average kid his age. In fact, it would seem that he is in a class by himself on the genius continuum. You see, little red headed James knows everything. To verify, all you simply have to do is ask him. Sure, it's an easy claim to make. There are lots of pretenders out there. Lynda's uncle Paul is "Cliff Claven-like" in knowing just about every tidbit of useless information. (Paul kind of looks like Cliffie too! Lucky Brenda!!) But when compared to James, Paul turns out only to be a pretender to the throne of being all knowing.. He is simply a master at parroting what he has seen on reruns of the Discovery Channel.
I have witnessed James' brilliance. The smart ones seem to have a mastery of grasping the obvious, whereas all others look for hidden meanings and answers to questions that never needed to be asked in the first place. The past Sunday, the Nixon clan gathered at mom's for our traditional weekly feast (FYI - any time there's gravy involved, then it can be classified as a feast). I was sporting a week's worth of facial scruff. I had let it get to that point for two reasons: one was to see how grey I had become, given I have very little hair on the top of my head to gauge such things; the second was to see if more manliness would spur on more womanliness in Lynda. From my experiment I learned that I could give Saint Nic a run for having the snowiest looking beard and I also found out that Lynda is all the woman I will ever need regardless of how much hair I have or from where it chooses to sprout. I dare not say any more, as she has forbidden me to mention her in my stories. (When she starts to read them, then I'll stop. Maybe.)
A week into having a face that more resembled a bear than my usual baby butt complexion, not one person had said anything to me. Not my wife, not our best friends who were home from Ontario, not my brothers, my kids, my mother, nor my many close friends who had seen me just about every day since I gave my Gillette razor a much needed vacation. I was beginning to wonder. Perhaps all of those years of trying to go unnoticed while following drug dealers around had made me a virtual ghost. I know I'm not drop dead gorgeous or a radical dresser, but eventually someone had to look me in the face and blurt something out.
Finally, finally, finally, someone took notice. Yes, it was James. As I sat on mom's couch, basking in the glow of having 'gluttoned' myself on a few plate loads of gravy covered something or other, James saddled up beside me, put his little hands of my cheeks and exclaimed "Uncle Jim, you have a beard!" James lived up to his self professed genius. I was so proud of him. I was about to give him a huge hug but when I took a good look at his face, he was sporting a gigantic moustache fashioned out of Grammie's gravy. It was hideous. I could barely bring myself to make eye contact. I certainly couldn't bring myself to tell him. I didn't want to be cruel and hurt his feelings. I figured it best just to say nothing. After all, he's four. He'll get over it.
Suddenly, the light bulb illuminated above my head. It all made sense to me now. People were looking at me for the last seven days. They were seeing my bristly beard take shape. The reason that no one said anything is that they were disgusted and embarrassed for me. I knew it couldn't have been my manly beard that grossed them out. I must have forgotten to wash off last Sunday's gravy moustache.
