The Severed Cortex

I'm embarrassed to say that I'm over two weeks behind on posting about hanging out with Robert. On the Saturday before my birthday Nancy showed up at the house with him around 3:00 in the afternoon. He gave me a couple of army men for my birthday and while that might sound odd to most people, it's not really all that odd for me. My cube at work is covered in them and Robert has been to my work. I'm sure he just wanted to add to my collection. I got a guy hucking a grenade and a machine gunner.
Robert helped Nancy make my favorite cake, lemon, while I watched the Cards game. Since we had to wait for the cake to bake, I offered him the choice of trying to fly the kites again (it was windy), or going to catch some fish for an hour. He decided to go fishing.

We ran by the BP station to get some bait (nightcrawlers) and headed over to Glik Park. On the way over there I was kicking myself for not getting in touch with my friend Todd who lives on Dunlap Lake, which is about 1/4 mile from the house. I know the fishing would be a lot better there and we'd have some room to fish off the bank or deck. We still caught fish at Glik Park, but they were again of the tiny size. Robert didn't want to put the worms on his hook and I didn't want to enable him. I did, however, show him one more time how to put the worm on a hook. When he needed a new worm he made a valiant effort to put one on, but he struggled. By the end of the two hours that we fished, (yes we were late getting back to the house for dinner), Robert had figured out how to put the worms on himself. He didn't like it though. I have to admit there's a certain slimy gross factor to it. Taking fish off the hook was another story. He really had trouble with it, although he tried. He didn't seem as grossed out about taking the fish off the hook. Instead, he was just really tentative to apply the proper amount of pressure. He'll learn.

We got back home just as Nancy was firing up the gas grill. Despite the fact that we are guys, we washed our hands before handling the food. We cooked hot dogs and polish on the grill, had some chips, and knocked back a coupla Coke-Cola's. I'm pretty sure I had an adult beverage. After dinner we scarfed down some lemon cake with homemade frosting. Very tasty, even if the cake icing gave me wicked heartburn later. Definitely still worth it.
After eating it was time to take Robert home and we talked about not getting in trouble anymore on the ride. Robert assured me he wouldn't get in any more trouble.

Since that time I've corresponded with our BBBS point person Beverly who had this to say about me: 'I don’t think that it is an exaggeration to state that you are probably the most positive male influence in his life.'. It's a little scary to refer to me and use the words positive influence at the same time, but maybe I'll get a gold star next to my name in the big scoreboard of life. If so, I've got that and total conciousness on my deathbed (promised to me by the Dalai Lama when I looped for him) going for me. Which is nice.

In other BBBS news, my friend and co-worker Nancy Schultz gets to meet her new little sister on May 7th.