Ronald and the pot of coffee

My Uncle Bill had twin brothers, Ronald and Bob. It had always been told that the boys (they were grown men but still called 'boys') had Downs' Syndrome but it seems that wasn't the case. They were mentally slow but mostly able to take care of themselves with minimal outside assistance.

The boys had very different personalities. Bob was the grumpy one. He mumbled and fussed and grumbled a lot. Ronald was good hearted and the nicest of the brothers. He was the more responsible of the two. We grew up with the boys around our family. As far as we kids were concerned, they were our uncles, too.

One time both Mom and Dad had to work the same night and I wasn't old enough to babysit by myself yet--so I must have been about eleven years old. Mom got Ronald to stay with us that evening. What a fiasco! Ronald was a sweetheart and no match for us four wild kids that night. We ran through the house, we made a mess of the living room, and we wouldn't take our baths when we were supposed to. Poor Ronald was about fit to be tied.

He had just about had it with us and it was getting late. Ronald knew what time we were supposed to be in the bed so he told us to pick up our junk and get in there. We did not go gently into that good night. We argued. We fought. We disobeyed. We railroaded poor Ronald. We told him we wanted a snack. He got us a snack. Then Karla had a brainstorm. We couldn't go to bed unless we had our before bedtime pot of coffee. The one Mama ALWAYS let us have.

At first he didn't believe us but we lied and lied and protested, and it took a good bit of it too, until we wore Ronald down. He made us four wild ones a pot of brewed coffee. When it was finished percolating, he poured us each a cup. We asked for sugar and milk and he put it on the table. Then for 20 more minutes we doctored up our never-before-in-our-lifetime cups of java. Mom wouldn't let us drink coffee. She told us it would make worms in our stomachs. Anyway, we tried to drink it but we really didn't like it. So we stirred and sugared it a lot and spilled and sloshed it all over the kitchen table. When Ronald was totally burnt out with us, he yelled at us to go to bed. He sucked all the fun out of our coffee party. The adventure was over so we went to bed leaving the mess all over the table.

That's the way Mom found the kitchen when she got home. A hot mess. Ronald would keep us from killing ourselves and each other but that was pretty much the extent of his babysitting skills. He didn't clean up anything and Mom was pretty mad when she saw the coffee cups, spoons, sugar and milk all over her table. She asked Ronald what went on and he just told her it was from our nightly before bed pot of coffee. Mom was dumbfounded.

Sweet, goodhearted Ronald never babysat for us again.