Timmy's Seventh Birthday

It's birthday time again. My little cousin, Timmy, is turning seven years old today. It's a big deal with cake and out of town relatives. Seven is an important milestone in our family. Timmy's big brother, Jimmy, now twelve years old, was saved at seven. Timmy is going to have to do something big to top finding the Lord. It's tough, the little kid rat race, the constant one-upmanship. Dog-eat-dog really, or maybe more like tropical fish-eat tropical fish which, as poor Timmy found out at six, is far more true to life.

Uncle Richard has gathered a crowd around him, as usual. Uncle Rich, our resident expert on life in our universe, always has to be at the center, whether it be of a crowd or just of attention in general. Today he lectures, even waxes poetic in places, on the subject of miniature golf. Did you know, he asks his clearly impressed crowd, that it was developed in the civil rights era of the 1960s? Oh, yes. It was created to give midgets a fair shot in the world of sports.

At the mention of civil rights, cousin Bob perks up and leaves the punchbowl to join the conversing crowd. He begins talking about all the stuff he's heard on the Glenn Beck show. He speaks impassionedly about how he's heard blacks are taking over, how they're going to make white people slaves. No one really listens. Uncle Rich has moved on to a new topic: pelicans and the dangers they presented when he was top ace in the Air National Guard.

Bob often finds people unwilling to pay attention. He's like the mold in his parent's basement. For forty-four years they've never gotten either to leave permanently. They figure it's ok, though. Most mold isn't too harmful, provided you don't inhale too much of it. Today, I think, Bob needs some attention. I suggest to one of Timmy's little friends that it would be very funny if he were to go and pour his punch on the front of Bob's pants. But, not to tell anyone I put him up to it otherwise no one would laugh and we'd both get yelled at. It was a tiny laugh riot as Bob skulked out of the room further convinced of the conspiracy against him.

The laughter subsides as Uncle Rich moves on to a most serious subject: his theory about how the Paul McCartney we see today is actually a clone created by the CIA and MI5. I've heard this one far too many times, so I head to the punchbowl for a refill. On my way, I notice Timmy has separated from his friends and is watching TV. There's a commercial on about tropical fish. They're very special, and expensive, fish that are guaranteed to live at least twenty years, and never, ever eat each other - provided you feed them the company's special fish food. For only $99.99 they will ship you two of the little fish and a month's supply of food. Phone in hand Timmy calls the 1-800 number. Little Timmy may not have found God on his seventh birthday, but he did find Uncle Rich's credit card.