The Bigguns and the Nephews

Sometimes, such as on the Internet, I think it's not necessarily such a good idea to talk about the children in our lives in such a way that anybody can tell who those children are.

After all, some of them might be at that stage in early adolescence where just being referred to *=as children, kids, teenagers, or young people makes them want to die of embarrassment.

Also, you never know what kind of predator might read your article and become interested in a child.

While spring cleaning I've dug up a lot of old documents and tapes where my father referred to his children as "The Bigguns." He actually recorded us as a band under that name. (The recordings weren't marketed commercially, but we were taken around to hospitals and nursing homes and the homes of disabled senior citizens, and ordered to sing...we had enough of a following to make me try to earn money as a singer in college.)

Since I'm an aunt rather than a mother, and since more of the children in my life are male than are female, I call them "The Nephews." About half of them belong to my natural sister. Others belong to my adoptive sister, and to a long-term client who became a close enough friend to teach her child to call me "aunt."

I reserve the right not to say anything about which ones are which, although once in a while I find it helpful to explain that "The Nephews" is a name that includes the nieces.

They've never toured together as a band. But they'd be about as credible a band, I think, as "The Bigguns" ever were.