My mom called me this morning and left a message on my voice mail to tell me that my brother’s wife had her baby this morning and all was well. But what really caught my interest was in the end of the message when she made the statement that “you’re an uncle again!”
It seems to me that this isn’t an uncommon thing to do either. On kids past the first you are a dad, again, or an uncle again, etc…. But how does this make sense? Did I lose status somewhere of my uncleship? Have all my other nieces and nephews died? And if so, how is this an appropriate way to tell me that 5 children have mysteriously died over night.
I mean I understand the practice. You want to throw out a congratulations of some sort to everyone somehow, even if I wasn’t exactly involved or even remotely important in the process. I think this especially works with parents who you really do want to congratulate.
But isn’t there something else we could say? Perhaps “Congratulations on your new son”? Do we have to say “You are a XXX again,” therefor implicating that you at some point were not? Or you could say “You are still an uncle!” I know, I know, it doesn’t have the same spark.