The day after my cousin's birthday

   Yesterday was the 30th birthday of one of my many cousins. I tend to frown upon favoritism, though my sister would probably say I'm the recipient of it, but this particular cousin and to a slightly lesser extent, his older brother are special to me. It's probably because we spent so much time together as children. We are of similar ages, I am pretty much in between the two of them and as kids we spent, with few exceptions, every other Sunday together at our shared grandparents' house.
   While the adults visited or prepared food we boys were outside, with any other cousins who happened to be there, playing football, or rather our simplified version of football. Our field was the front yard, that being at most 30 yards. I say at most because I'm estimating and I'm a horrible judge of distance, not because the yard had a variable length. Anyway two completions for a first down because we weren't going to get ten yards out of four downs without crossing most of the field anyway. We were kids, it was fun.
   I also spent time in the summers out at their parents' house in Leander; it's still not a very developed area so there's a feeling of isolation but at the same time you can see the neighbor's house, so not really. They had a pool, which has since fallen into disuse since they both have moved away to start families of their own, dirt bikes, a trampoline, upon which I came the closest I ever had to flying that I can remember as a child, there were wild animals; scorpions, tarantulas, white tailed deer, rattlesnakes, I don't think I ever actually saw a rattler out there but that's beside the point. Oh and tons of cactus just waiting to be fallen into, that is fun let me tell you.
   In any case, my sister and I have spent the most time with our cousin who just turned 30, John. After our family moved he would come up sometimes to spend a week or two with us. I think he's always been closer to our shared grandparents and when I moved back down to Austin and lived with them for awhile we would spend a lot of time together, playing card games mostly. Sometimes we would go down to a coffee shop on the lake, Mozart's, there's a family in joke concerning one of our trips down there that I won't divulge, because where then would the mystery be?
   Anyway, I think it's because of all the time spent together and all the funny memories shared that I favor John a bit. Happy Birthday John. Hope it was a great one.