I have twin nephews, Josh and Jayson. They are not identical twins. In fact, they don’t look anything alike. Josh is long and skinny with fare skin, and Jayson is squat and bulky with olive skin. They also have two very distinct personalities. Josh is meticulous, articulate, and artistic, while Jason is “all boy” as my mom puts it, a little caveman; he’s dirty and loud and oft communicates with grunts. Josh is Greg Kinnear. Jayson is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. When it’s time to play army, Josh carefully prepares for the part, arranging his canteen and belt of fake bullets just so. Meanwhile, Jayson makes loud explosion noises and urges Josh to get on with it: “Come on! Let’s just run around and shoot each other.” More often than not, Jayson loses his patience and delivers a not-so-make-believe blow—which never fails to ignite a not-so-make-believe battle. Boys are awesome.

After eight years as an active uncle, I’m also privileged to know their differing fighting styles. Josh is much more cunning and patient. He prefers grappling and has a strong ground game. Jayson favors the “fists of fury” approach: he bulldozes in and unleashes an onslaught of punches and devastating leg kicks. I have coordinated several ill-advised gladiator matches, the most memorable being an armed showdown about four years ago: Jayson calmly swung a koosh ball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koosh_ball) on an elastic rope, not unlike a medieval flail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail_(weapon)), as Josh ducked to avoid it and used the butt end of a plastic M-16 to bludgeon Jayson’s head and midsection. Ironically, no one was hurt until I intervened and accidentally slammed Josh’s head against the stiff arm of the coach. That Uncle Matt, he’s a real dipshit.

I appreciate my nephews’ differences. I can play sophisticated card games with Josh, and then chase Jayson with a hockey stick until he runs into a tree. It’s nice to have the yin and the yang in one convenient package. However, there are some things all eight-year-old boys agree on, and that’s “festivals with carnival games and prizes are fun.” Shit, I’m twenty-four and I would have agreed with that perspective. Until last Saturday…

The Dudes—Josh and Jayson—had harangued my dad since Monday about a festival at their school on Saturday. Apparently, there would be games and prizes and food, and it was all free. My dad said he’d take them, not knowing that he was already committed to a trip to Platteville for a graduation on that day. My nephew Josh does not take oral commitments lightly, so the responsibility fell on Uncle Matt. I didn’t necessarily mind because I figured I’d get bombed on Friday night and work off my Saturday hangover eating corndogs and playing that sledgehammer game until I owned a stuffed, purple panda the size of VW Beetle. I even roped my buddy, Nick, into coming: “It’s a nice day out. It will be fun.”

It wasn’t fun. It was a Fuckin’ Freakshow.

I was, as planned, brutally hung-over. And it was finally a nice day in this Godforsaken climate. So you can imagine my delight when the first “attraction” at this “festival” was a dank gymnasium full of poster-board displays presented by the likes of Milwaukee’s City Health Department. When I was eight-years-old, I would’ve broke wind once and immediately headed for an exit. But alas, everyone at the displays were giving away pencils, which must be what eight-year-olds use as gambling currency these days—like cigarettes in prison—because my nephews scoured that gym until they had enough pencils each to hand-copy War & Peace. In hieroglyphics.

Fifteen minutes in that gym and my buddy Nick was already calling someone else for a ride home. And this was before he knew what awaited us on the playground behind the school…

To Be Continued…