niblings.

Before I get into it, I'm going to repeat a frequent gripe of my sister's: there is no word that means "nieces and nephews." We have siblings when we want to talk about multiple brothers and sisters of different genders, but there's no analogous term for the children of your siblings. There is no SAT question that says "brother : sibling :: nephew :: _________." Maybe this kind of thing is only important in families like mine, where the members are so fruitful that you need a term to describe the huge population that is the next generation of loud, large-foreheaded gremchkins. I've heard my sister complain about this many times, and it never bothered me until today, when I tried to write this entry and I found myself saying "nieces and nephews" over and over. I even used to the internet to see if there was such a word, maybe even an archaic word. The internet says that there is no such word, so I was thinking that I could make one up, start using it, and then get a Nobel Prize in Useful Word Coinage. The best I came up with was "nerfs," but then I found that someone else on the internet had come up with something much better: "niblings." Aside from having a silliness factor which I love, it's also pretty intuitive in terms of people knowing what you mean without explaining. I'm never going to win a Nobel Prize now.

I therefore declare that the word "nibling" is good and will be used on this blog henceforth. And now back to your regularly scheduled blog entry.

I've decided to rework my Good Aunt Birthday System. A few years ago, I made good on a New Year's Resolution to send birthday cards and money to each of my niblings. My system up until now has been to send a card containing money, the dollar amount matching the age of the kid. This is admittedly very cutesy, but it worked great for the seven-year-olds.

I've discovered a couple of problems with this system. For one thing, the dollar-for-each-year thing stops being cool at some point. I felt pretty silly sending my niece a check for $17 last year. Aunts have a bad reputation for treating their niblings like they're perpetually five, and I don't wish to contribute to that stereotype. Also, I needed to figure out a cap on that tradition, otherwise some future niece-in-law is going to be asking her husband why he just received $42 in the mail. And he'll say it's because his Aunt Sandra is out of her mind. His wife will then ask who even uses the postal service anymore. Then they'll get in their flying cars.

This year, I decided that the cap was 18 years old, and so I sent two niblings plain old twenty dollars bills. That cost me an extra four dollars this year, but when it prevents them from thinking how sad it is that someone only eight years older has already completely forgotten what it was like to be 18, then that's four dollars well-spent. Because all I really want in life is not to save the odd dollar here and there, but for kids not to think I'm corny and out of touch. There are two kinds of maiden aunts in this world: cool and batty. It's a fine line sometimes.

So: my new system. After the tenth birthday, the dollar amount will no longer correspond to the age. When you are ten, you will get ten dollars, but when you turn eleven, you get fifteen. You'll continue to get fifteen until you are fifteen. At sixteen, you will get twenty, and that's all the moving up you're going to do. At twenty, you'll get twenty. At twenty-seven, you'll get twenty. At thirty-nine, you'll get twenty, so stop counting on your Aunt to support you with birthday contributations and get a job already.

I haven't yet decided what happens up until age ten. I could stick with the old system and give them a dollar a year. Or I could give the under fives a fiver and then six thru tens would get $10. Also, what kind of bills do I use: all ones or can I through in a five when it's appropriate? What is neatest for a young man, newly seven-years-old? Parents, I ask for your input, because I'm only a cool maiden aunt here, and I really have no idea about kids these days.

Some of you are giving this a lot of considered thought and some of you are wondering why people even think about this sort of trivial crap. For the second group, please cover your ears while I tell the first group something (Secret: I already made a nice Excel spreadsheet mapping out my many niblings, their birthdays, how much they would receive each year, and the overall expected annual cost of being a generous aunt. There was color coding.) Anyway, these are the things I think about: how to win Nobel Prizes in obscure made-up categories, how to convince niblings that I'm hip and with-it, and how life goals can be represented in spreadsheets.