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| The famous Richard wagon train. |
When we were not doing our best to survive the trailer park we often visited Other Mother and Papa and my Down's syndrome uncle Richard that lived with them.
Richard was the perfect uncle for any kid. He would give piggy back rides for hours, push us high on the swings or spin us so fast on the merry-go-round we would either fall off or puke. He had a train of four wagons that he had wired together into a train. We would start out around the block with five or six kids in the wagons, but as all the neighborhood kids would see him pulling the train they would run and jump on. Soon he would have twenty or more kids riding on the wagons as he pulled them around the block and back home.
Richard always had several combs and pens in his pockets. We were little turds so we would grab one out of his pockets and run away to pretend to flush them down the toilet. He would get super mad and yell at us mispronouncing our names because of his speech impediment.
He would say, “Napon, now son, give me back my comb.”
I would laugh and say, “Who is Napon, Richard? I'm NaTHan.”
My brother and I remember these names so fondly that many times we have used his mispronunciations of our names as email addresses, screen names and terms of endearment. Napon and Mapoo forever.
Even with our immature teasing he has enjoyed being an uncle so much that he demands to be called 'Uncle' or 'The Uncle' and is agitated when others try and usurp the title no matter how legitimate they think their claim is. There is only one true 'Uncle' indivisible and eternal. He spends much of his time reminding people that he is their Uncle even if he has no biological claim to the title.
Living at home with his mom and dad with limited social opportunities he loved using the phone and would call us several times each day so much so that he monopolized the phone and we missed many calls. My dad instated a One-Call-A-Day rule that we took great joy in enforcing by yelling, “One call a day Richard!” and then slamming the phone down. He would be mad and want an apology or to 'speak at our momma'. We would yell, “One call a day” again and hang the phone back up.
