During a little family get-together, my nephew (three years old) decided that since the first bite of a cookie was the tastiest, he should naturally take the first bite of EVERY cookie. His cruel father quickly told him that it was inappropriate for him to do so and stopped his son.

My nephew voiced his dissatisfaction in the most calm and reasonable manner yet known to man: he lay on the floor and yelled at the top of his lungs like an adorable little falsetto foghorn.

After a few minutes, my foolish brother hugged his son and said:

Brother: “There, there. It’s time to calm down now.”

Nephew: “No! NO! I will ANGRY UP NOW!”

And he kept his promise. It felt like the sound would make my windows shatter, and my house was in the next town over. My ears will never be the same.

My wife’s first nephew was a quiet child. He didn’t speak for the first two years of his life. He was engaged with activities and family, and he responded physically when asked to do something. They didn’t think he was on the autism spectrum, but they weren’t sure what problem, if any, he had.

One day when my wife was visiting, the family went for a long drive. Somewhere along the way, they saw some unusual sight. Her nephew stared at whatever it was and then turned to the family and asked:

Nephew: “What the h*** was that?!”

Everyone was stunned. Instead of “mama” or “dada”, his first words were, “What the h*** was that?!”

He’s been talkative ever since.

My aunt was babysitting one of her nieces, who was four at the time, while I was at work. I came home and was stunned to see that she had put on “Jaws” for them to watch. It was at the scene where the camera focused on a little boy on an inflatable device.

Me: “[Aunt], are you serious?! [Niece] is way too young for this!”

Aunt: “Relax. She’s four; she doesn’t understand any of this yet.”

She and I went back and forth, but my aunt is infamous in our family for never backing down under any circumstances. The only time I’d ever heard her admit she was wrong was when we were debating what time a restaurant closed. When I pulled up the restaurant’s website to show the closing time, she literally told me that was the only time I’d ever win an argument with her.

On the TV, the little boy’s inflatable washed up on the shoreline with red water.

Niece: *Solemnly* “Oh, him dead.”

I stared back at my aunt, who wouldn’t make eye contact. She shut off the TV.

Me: “What was that about [Niece] not understanding?”

Aunt: “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

At the very least, she never made another boneheaded movie decision like that again.

CONTENT WARNING: Medical Crisis (Happy ending!)

My brother and his family live several states away from me. Wanting to be a good aunt despite that fact, I’ve been doing weekly video chats with my niece since she was about a year old. I worried that she was too young to really enjoy video chats at that age, but once we figured out how to install an app that would lock the screen so she couldn’t accidentally close anything when she insisted on carrying me around the house, she took to it quickly.

At the time of this story, [Niece] was four years old and had recently gotten her first kids’ tablet to keep her entertained during long car rides. On my last visit to her, I’d personally installed a kids’ messenger app, added myself as a contact, and then showed her how she could use it to call me herself. I wasn’t sure how much use she would get out of it; she was only four and generally only got the tablet during car rides. She surprised me again by being quite eager to call me — perhaps a bit too eager. Just a week before this story, she had called me at 1:00 am after she woke up in the middle of the night and decided to fetch her tablet from where it was charging and call me rather than let her dads know she was awake.

This time, it was the middle of the day, and I’d just left work to head to a doctor’s appointment when I heard my phone ring with the ringtone associated with [Niece]’s app. She had tried calling me during the middle of the day a few times when she first got the app but quickly learned that I was only available in the evenings, so I wasn’t sure why she would be calling me during work hours. I was quite tempted to just ignore it and continue my drive.

However, I wanted to encourage [Niece] to keep calling me while the app was still new to her, and missing all her calls would discourage that. After some debate, I decided I’d pull over and answer the call but only have a quick chat before reminding her I was busy during the day and couldn’t talk longer.

When I answered, I didn’t get the usual giggling exciting face I expected. [Niece] looked worried and uncertain and immediately started asking me to “wake Dada”. I asked why, and she told me that she couldn’t wake him and wanted me to.

I asked her to take me to him, and she took me to the kitchen. She turned the tablet around so I could see her dada. It was a very bad view — the tablet swinging around in [Niece]’s hands made it hard to make out what I was seeing — but it was enough for me to see my brother’s husband lying on the kitchen floor in an awkward pose. [Niece] ran to him and shook him with me on the tablet, and he didn’t respond.

Quite worried now, I asked [Niece] to stay on the tablet before switching over to my phone and calling 911. I relayed what [Niece] had told me and my brother’s address. They dispatched an ambulance and police to their house. Then, the 911 operator asked me to relay questions to [Niece]. I spent a very stressful bit of time acting as the middle man relaying whatever the operator said to [Niece] and trying to get her to check on her dada.

It was hard given that [Niece] was only four years old and clearly didn’t understand everything that was happening, but we managed to confirm that her dada was breathing and had no obvious wounds on him. We also had her look for an open door, ultimately relaying to the emergency workers that the front door was locked but that they could go in through the garage after [Niece] managed to reach the garage door opener by using a stool to stand on.

Just around the time that we got the garage door open, a police officer arrived. He came in and spoke to me through the tablet to confirm he was there, and soon after that, the ambulance arrived. The police officer kept [Niece] in another room, and I did my best to keep her distracted and reassure her as the ambulance took her dada away.

During all of this, [Niece] was amazing! She was clearly anxious, but she didn’t cry or give up. She did everything we asked of her to the best of her four-year-old capacity. She frankly seemed far more in control of herself than I felt at that moment. She only let herself cry after the ambulance was there and we told her that they would take Dada to the hospital. Whether that was because she finally realized the severity of the situation or because that was the first time she wasn’t needed to do anything and had the luxury to cry I don’t know.

After the ambulance had come and gone, I was assured that the police officer would take [Niece] somewhere where she could be watched. I was assigned the unenviable job of trying to contact my brother and let him know what had happened and where he could find his daughter and husband. It took a few tries to get through to him at work — I had to call our parents to figure out what his work number even was — but I relayed my message and wished my brother and his family the best of luck as he rushed out of work to his family.

By that time, I was quite late for my appointment, and I was in no condition to return back to work as originally intended after the appointment. So, I drove home and sat anxiously in my house for several hours waiting for an update.

It turns out that Dada had an otherwise mostly benign tumor, which had placed enough pressure on his brain to cause him to pass out. The doctors were able to remove it, and Dada made a full recovery. However, they also said that if he had gone even a few minutes longer without help, he might have suffered permanent harm or even death.

[Niece] didn’t know the code to open her dada’s cell phone and wouldn’t have been aware it was possible to call 911 without it. She lives in the country, far away from others. It would have taken her a good ten to fifteen minutes to walk to her nearest neighbors, assuming she knew how to get there as fast as possible and there was anyone at home when she arrived. That means if I hadn’t answered [Niece]’s call, as I came very close to doing, it’s unlikely she could have reached anyone else in time to save her dada.

Even now, years later, it still fills me with dread thinking how close I came to accidentally letting her Dada die because I couldn’t be bothered to pull over and answer her call!

Luckily, that didn’t happen, and everyone was fine. I relayed to both fathers how amazing their daughter had been in the middle of a crisis, and they both praised her for saving her Dada’s life. Now that the terror of the moment is over, she insists on telling every stranger she can the story of how she bravely saved her father’s life. I can’t fault her for a little bragging, considering she seemed to handle the emergency better than I did — at only four years old.

For the record, her current life aspiration when she grows up is to become either a doctor or an “ambulance driver”. I suppose she’s addicted to saving people during crises now.

CONTENT WARNING: Dead Body (At a funeral, in a casket)

Recently, my grandmother died. Several weeks later, her funeral was organised. For us, it is a thirteen-hour drive from our town to hers. We drove nine hours the first day, slept at my aunt’s, and then drove the remaining hours the next morning.

The wake took place the next morning before the religious ceremony. Just before the lunch break, my aunt and mother requested we take some last pictures with her. At one point, [Aunt] requested a picture of herself and her siblings with our granny. I took some photographs.

Aunt: ”Do we look good?”

I replied without thinking.

Me: ”You all look alive.”

They were in front of Granny’s casket, and you could see her in the background of every photo. I was mortified, but they laughed at me. I explained that sometimes people would pose awkwardly for pictures and look like zombies with frozen expressions.

The next day, we travelled to my brother’s home about six hours away to spend the night. We were preparing the evening meal when we related the picture-taking incident.

Oldest Niece: *Matter-of-factly* ”Well… they all died laughing, then.”

The laughter took a long while to stop. My sister-in-law just looked exasperated. Like father, like daughter, weird humour included.