Hybrid

Spent the afternoon out in the country visiting my cousin Maddie, three years old now, Stinkerbell is what her business cards say, and she farts in the pool and eats the bubbles at this Hawaiian-themed birthday bash she’s having.

The attendees of this country shindig are not quite a cross section of the idyllic rural Midwest. Sure there are the requisite three or four soybean farmers huddled together in the hot garage with shiny cans of beer in their hands, but there are also pompous pipe-and-beret types, world-class body builders, WWII amputees, and a lonely African-American woman with vitiligo (rare skin disease made famous by Michael Jackon) who sucks the air out of the room with a story about how a grocery store manager, disgusted by the white blotches on her hands and face, once followed her around the store and threw out every bit of produce she touched. All of us are wearing leis. No one is really watching the kids playing on the Slip ‘N Slide outside.

Someone asks Maddie’s father, my Uncle Don, what he thinks she’ll be when she grows up and he suggests that she’ll take after him and be a hunter, or more accurately, a huntress. Me, I think she’ll be either the President of the United States or Miss Universe. She’s special. It’s all in her half Asian, half Caucasian genes. My Aunt Jen is the typical Nguyen – smart, competitive, hams up stories with a dash of panache – while Uncle Don, the first white boy to marry into our family, is a laid-back, flannel-wearing, glass-eyed redneck. This gene soup, coupled with our careful guidance, will one day make her the female equivalent of the Dos Equis guy.

She’ll be bilingual. She’ll shoot quail or pheasant for breakfast and then beat her eggs with chopsticks. She’ll drink retired truck drivers under the table at bars and then use her uncanny understanding of trigonometry to kick their asses in billiards. And then she’ll tweet about it. She’ll dress up as Larry the Cable Guy for Halloween one year, then as a JabbaWockee the next year. Her turbocharged ’99 Honda Prelude will be adorned with the Confederate battle flag. Her every entrance into a room will be accompanied by the clash of a gong, followed by the beginning part of Reba McEntire’s “I’d Rather Ride Around With You.” Her weapon of choice will–

OK I’m getting silly. But the point is she’s going to be freaking awesome when she grows up, especially since I plan on contributing mightily to her development. I mean we’re talking Cubs games, care packages full of comic books and Joan Jett records and French New Wave cinema, advanced calculus lessons, cheat codes for Mortal Kombat. Trust me – I have it all planned out. She is my project.

At the end of the party we’re all in the front yard watching Maddie become a caricature of herself as she operates her new toy, a Fisher-Price John Deere Gator tractor, while donning a Karate Kid bandana. It’s really cute when she drives the Gator round and round in circles, and even cuter when she learns how to put it in reverse and it nearly knocks over a tiki torch before crashing into a tree. The other kids in the vehicle cry hysterically, but Maddie doesn’t. She just looks at them, and then at us, and then she kind of sighs as if to say, “You imbeciles lack the sophistication to understand that I totally did that on purpose.” What a girl.