For a single guy, the act of being an uncle offers many benefits and few restrictions. These include being able to step out of the uncle mold and recapture your own life at will...but it’s not really that simple.

Today, let’s explore uncling at a family event. By the end of today’s lesson, you’ll have learned at least one lesson about being an uncle.

When you arrive at a party, you’ll be greeted in one of three way. You’ll hear peals of glee and little feet will skip to the door to say hello and deliver hugs. These are different from the hugs you get when these miniature people (we’ll call them peewees) say goodbye. These hugs are real, not induced by parents and are indicative of a bond that stretches across time.

The second greeting is, for me, the best. It’s the shout across the room. “Hi, uncle Jeff!” This too isn’t prompted by an involved parent but it still shows that the peewees know who you are and are at least aware of your presence. This presence awareness can be affected with presents, but that’s a topic for another column.

It’s great because it allows you to interact without bribery and you can conduct your adult greetings and actions - like handing over the bottle of wine, getting a beer, finding the guys on the couch in front of the golf/baseball/hockey/football game without stepping over and around peewees.

Third greeting is the non- or hider-greeting. This is when the peewees bond themselves to mom’s leg or hide in their room or under the couch or in the cabinet or in the dog pen or anywhere, just to avoid saying hello. This behavior is the result of shyness or a genuine dislike for you.

The hider-greeting hurts my heart a little. I feel that I’ve failed in my uncle training if I can’t at least get a peewee to say hello to me.

It’s not as bad as what my mother went through (as many do) when the newborn peewees would cry anytime she picked them up. It wasn’t that they hated her, but newborns cry for about 42,000 reasons and it just so happened that they’d cry whenever mum held my nieces or nephews before age one.

So, we’re past the greetings and into the meal. Not much goes on during this time except for a couple questions about the peewees’ school, sports and pets. Then it’s on to post-meal play.

This can take the form of coloring, playing with blocks, viewing bunnies or even rudimentary sports. Let’s stop for a moment and focus on the fact that today’s uncling column is focused on peewees between the ages of 2 and 10. Older uncling will be covered in future pieces - mostly because the interactions and activities are far different.

Bear in mind that with any activity, your attention span as an adult male is about the same as that of any peewee. This gives you an advantage because when you are starting to tire of coloring turkeys for Thanksgiving or throwing the football in the backyard, the peewee is starting to get tired too. Just hang on for a little bit longer without throwing a tantrum and you’ll both be able to move on to other things.

Speaking of attention span, mine is starting to waver so I’d better explain what your lesson today has been. Aside from being stoic and psychologically strong enough to deal with the rejection you might sometimes feel around your nieces and nephews, you also have to remember they aren’t adults.

No matter how great a spiral they throw to you, they’re still going to wail like a banshee if they get bonked with the ball.

No matter how artistic you think pink feathers on a turkey might be, a tantrum could be just around the corner if you ruin their drawing.

And no matter how much they hugged and shouted your name when you arrived, they’re still going to sprint across the room to mommy and daddy whenever they’re disappointed or hurt.

That’s the reality of being an uncle. With your complementary attention spans, if you don’t make a big deal about being rejected, the next time you show up at the house or see these peewees in the wild, they’ll accept you as if nothing happened.

Then you get to be the best uncle all over again.