This afternoon I got a call out of nowhere. It was my niece and she needed help. She was stuck at a gas station with a car she had just bought, her engine overheated, and without any idea on what to do. I’m no mechanic, but I know just enough about cars to keep myself out of trouble most of the time, so I said I’d be right there. Worst comes to worst, I could give her a ride home or help get her a tow.

I’ll spare the gory details involving me finding a luckily simple problem inside a minute of getting there, two separate trips to an auto parts store, and me putting on a 2 hour wrestling match with a single hose clamp (I won; barely). As a completely unrelated aside I hate newer cars and their lack of space for things like tools and fingers.

The relief on my niece’s face when I got there, and the double relief when we got the car going again made it all worth it. When we care about people gratitude can sometimes feel like the most valuable currency in the world. I would have done this for her any time, and have done similar for her in the past involving the odd dead battery, but this time was extra special.

For those who follow me on BlueSky you know that this past month has been a hard one for me and my family. Two hurricanes, a death of a matriarch, and most recently the unexpected death of one of my oldest and dearest friends. Ralph was like a brother to me and I had known him for over 30 years before he passed away on Halloween at the too young age of 45 with his family gathered around him. I watched his ex-wife and daughters scream and cry. Aside from my own pain my heart broke especially for them.

Part of that was normal compassion for people who were in such palpable anguish. Part of it was because I had a good understanding of that pain. My dad was killed when I was young, and it's a special kind of pain that is caused when a child is robbed of a beloved parent. It’s a pain that I knew from experience would hurt like hell at that moment and would still be hurting like hell decades later like a wound that never quite heals, surfacing at the most unexpected of times. I empathized with both what was and what was to be.

However, part of my heart breaking for them was personal because his ex-wife is my sister and his daughters are my nieces. So while I thought of him as my brother because of all that we had been through together, his wife and daughters would have been my family regardless.

So when my niece called me she wasn’t just a niece calling her uncle for some help. She was a young woman who was desperately reaching out because her world was crumbling around her and needed a reliable spot to stand on. When her car broke down I wasn’t the first call she made. Out of instinct she picked up her phone and called her dad. And as the phone went immediately to voice mail and she heard his voice the awful truth of her new life slapped her in the face: her dad would never be able to come to her rescue again. So the quiver of her voice and tears that ran down her face as she called me looking for help had precious little to do with her car’s condition.

We uncles are an unusual breed. We’re rarely anyone’s first choice to help in a situation, at least partially because sometimes we can do as much harm as good. (Why didn’t I bring any tools with me in my truck when my niece asked for help with her car? What are you a cop? Mind your own business.) Uncles, obviously, can’t be painted with too broad a brush. There are good uncles and there are bad uncles. I have uncles who I have literally never seen sober and other uncles who would give me a kidney.

After my dad died, my Uncle Don was a kind and generous man who helped us in any way he could. He stood by my side at my father’s funeral as I saw his body one final time. So be mindful when I am referring to uncles, I’m referring to the best of breed. The ones who have your back even when they have no clue how to help.

As well, for those who listen to my parasocial friends at the Shutdown Fullcast or subscribe to the fantastic newsletter at Channel 6 know that an uncle in this way is not a gendered term. It is a spirit. An ethos. It is defined not by your actual gender, but your VIBES. Women and non-binary folk can be uncles too. In fact, my Aunt Ruth is about as uncle as you can get. Always both helping us get into and out of various mischiefs. Always with a gleam in her eye that said “We might get in trouble, but it’s gonna be a good time.”

For a lot of people in our world right now, we’re heading into a time where they feel something akin to what my niece was feeling. Unmoored from a reality that long ago seemed stable and is proving to be unsteadier than they anticipated. People across varying backgrounds and identities who are looking around them and wondering “Who will help me when my life is falling apart or just when I don’t even know what the next step is?” So because of that I give you a challenge:

The World Needs Some Uncles

The world needs some folks who will step into the gap, to throw their arm over the shoulder of people who are hurt, confused, lost, and abused and say “How can I help?” There are people all around us who are hurting because they feel like no one is fighting for them. That fight is the role of the uncle. It’s not going to be perfect. Uncles aren’t known to be great tacticians, but uncles will always be the first to say “You don’t mess with my family.” Parents have their kids to think of in terms of risk calculation. Uncles are the ones willing to lay it on the line because they don’t bother to make the calculations.

So you, go find some nieces and nephews. Go be an uncle. Listen with an open ear. Look out for your family. And no matter what, fight like hell for them. And. if you feel like you need some help, someone to stand in the gap with you, go find yourself an uncle. Be patient. They may not know how to help at first, but they’ll make up for it in love.

This isn’t the first post I expected to write on this blog, but it’s the one I need to write right now. I envision this blog as a place where I can get way over my head talking about things that are interesting to me, but that I’m not actually an expert in. In a way this post is that. Talking about things you barely understand is the firmament on which many uncles tread. However in many ways this post isn’t that. I promise next time I’ll have something different to say. Currently brewing is a dissection of two things that seem unrelated at first glance: college football conferences and congressional districts.