The Ol' Switch-a-Roo

There was one of the rare occaisions that Goh, Jenny, and Wei actually drove up to San Francisco one weekend. Wei was about 1 or 1.5 years old, or so, I think. Anyway, the reason they came up was because Goh and Jenny had to go to a company function that evening. Obvioiusly, they couldn't take Wei with them. The problem was that Goh and Jenny couldn't leave Wei alone. Wei had the worst case of separation anxiety I've ever seen in a 1 year old, and she had the lungs and yelling capacity to prove it (a trait inherited from Goh, no doubt).

Goh was sitting on the sofa chair in the corner with Wei sitting on the floor with her back to him, clinging to the leg of his jeans. Coincidentally, I was also wearing jeans. I came up with a quick scheme: while Wei was temporarily distracted by someone in front, Goh would slip off to the side and I would quickly take his place. Wei, sitting on the floor with her back to the sofa chair, wouldn't know the difference until Goh and Jenny were safely away or until she turned around. It was the best idea I could come up with, anyway, and no one else offerred any bright ideas so we tried it. And it worked!

Wei was happy and content for about 10 minutes after Goh and Jenny left for their function. Then Wei decided to turn around and noticed that it wasn't her ba-ba sitting behind her, but me. Wei then decided to test the hearing acuity of our neighbors on the corner of our street for the next 30 minutes or so. I did my best to comfort the little booger, bouncing her up and down while holding her, showing herself in the mirror, giving her my stuffed E.T. to play with. But nothing would stop the Iron Lung; she would stop when she decided to. Just when I thought my hearing was about to go, the deafening cacophony of the banshee's wails died down. Oh, thank God. My hearing would be preserved after all. But how much of it I lost, who could tell?

So Wei made a new buddy that night, and we were buddies for about 20 minutes more until my friends came to pick me up. Whelp! Gotta go! As I walked towards the door to leave, my niece decided once again to subject our neighbors to a hearing test. To make things a bit easlier, I took her to the front door with me where I would hand her off to Mom, and then jump in my friends' car. Easier said than done. As I was trying to hand her off, Wei grabbed the sleeve of my shirt with the Vulcan death grip and wouldn't let go. I had to pull and tug for a bit while Wei was reaching out towards me, but I finally broke free and jumped in Rich's car.

"Man, that is one attached kid," said Rich.
"Yeah," I replied. I couldn't help but feel kind of guilty because it was almost like I was deserting my niece. But not really; not like I was leaving her with a complete stranger. She was at home with Mom and Dad. Who would be better to take care of her than those two? And if Wei wanted to get in to a screaming match, Mom was there to rise to the challenge.

Looking back, it was the ol' switch-a-roo that began the night's festivities.