uncmaxxing: becoming playground equipment with dignity

there is a particular moment in adulthood when you realize you have become furniture.

not metaphorically. i mean a small child has looked at your back, performed several calculations involving leverage and the complete absence of fear, and decided you are now part of the climbing wall.

#uncmaxxing: apparently the final form of having a nephew is becoming playground equipment.

children do not recognize personal space as a legal concept

my nephew Sam hanging off my back in the kitchen is not an unusual event so much as the natural outcome of being within grabbing distance. children do not ask whether you are prepared to become a ride. they simply begin boarding.

this is one of the stranger pleasures of being an uncle. parents have to maintain civilization. they are responsible for meals, bedtimes, school forms, shoes that have somehow vanished while still being inside the house, and the ongoing investigation into why everything is sticky. an uncle can arrive, make the situation louder, get climbed like a moderately stable tree, and then leave before anyone has to locate a matching pair of socks.

it is an excellent system, especially for the uncle.

Family play does not need an objective beyond everyone agreeing to the same small, temporary world. Photo by Bill Branson for the National Cancer Institute, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

the fun uncle is mostly controlled irresponsibility

people talk about being the “fun uncle” like it requires gifts, elaborate outings, or a convertible purchased during a manageable midlife crisis. mostly, it seems to require being willing to participate in whatever bit a child has started without immediately asking where the bit is going.

the answer is usually nowhere. this is the beauty of it.

adults are forever trying to make activities produce something. the walk should count as exercise. the hobby should become a side hustle. the photograph should be optimized for a platform. even relaxing has developed performance metrics. did you hydrate? did you practice mindfulness? did you extract the maximum restorative value from sitting completely still?

a kid will spend twenty minutes repeatedly falling off the same cushion because the fall made a funny noise once. this is a far more honest relationship with leisure.

Sometimes “being available” is simply treating a child’s current project like the important briefing it clearly is. Photo by Nenad Stojkovic, licensed CC BY 2.0.

being remembered as available

i do not remember every toy I had as a child, and I definitely do not remember which adults bought most of them. I remember who was willing to get on the floor. I remember the adults who listened to an explanation that made no sense and responded as though I had presented a complicated but potentially viable infrastructure proposal.

that is probably the actual job. not performing childhood enthusiasm perfectly, but making room for it. being the adult who can be interrupted by a very urgent report about a bug, a cartoon, or an object found under the couch. being someone whose attention does not always have to be earned by doing something impressive.

it is easy to forget how much power adults have over the atmosphere in a room. we decide whether something is annoying, embarrassing, too loud, too weird, or worth joining. sometimes the kindest possible response is to accept that you have been assigned the role of mountain and crouch down a little so the smaller person can get a better grip.

uncmaxxing has terrible ergonomics

none of this means my spine has endorsed the arrangement.

being an uncle in your late thirties introduces a widening gap between your emotional willingness to roughhouse and your lower back’s deeply conservative interpretation of the same proposal. the child sees a beloved relative. the lumbar region sees an OSHA violation.

still, there are worse ways to discover that you are no longer young than having someone assume you are strong, safe, and probably willing to make a ridiculous noise when they climb aboard.

I can work with that.

---

originally inspired by a moment posted on Bluesky. The embedded photograph includes alt text on the source post.