My (Little) Brother Jake

Wednesday was an interesting sort of day for me. It began on Friday ("blimey! thats some long Wednesdays!" - reader, "Put some damn pants on" - me) when Kat, my girlfriend sent a text to ask if I'd be up for looking after our friend Claire's son Jake. I've met Jake a few times and like him a great deal. He's 12 years old, a high functioning autistic and, most importantly, a really genuinely nice kid. Of course, I said yes straight away. I then preceded to worry about this for the next four days.

Not that I didn't think he'd enjoy the experience - kids seem to like me in general which has probably got quite a lot to do with the fact that I wear Muppet T-shirts, have a house full of cartoons and toys, listen to loud music and generally look like a boy in an ill-fitting adult suit. This could open the window for being one of the town's leading pederasts but thankfully I'm not all into that scene. Hell, I barely like most children so the idea of being even more close to the snotty, unpleasant beings...no thank you.

Thankfully, Jake isn't at all like that having been brought up properly and I knew we'd have a good day...but still in the back of my head was the thought that I was this young person's sole care giver for the day and I'd better not fuck this up. I thought of a few DVDs he might like to watch - not the easiest task with a 12 year old, despite what you'd assume - and figured we might play a bit of Xbox. Beautiful Katamari, LEGO Harry Potter, that sort of thing...

In case you don't know what Dead Rising 2 is. Well, there's some zombies. Lots of zombies. And blood...so very much blood. Its an 18 certificate full on Romero-homaging mall-centric 'smoosh em up' and a lot of fun to boot (although still glitchy, suffocated by tightly-timed missions and missing a proper two player mode, Zomb-o-game fans!) but probably not what a highly impressionable preteen lad should be spending a beautiful sunny day bashing away at. 

When I was 12, I was still terrified by the flesh coming off the animated skull on the countdown clock used on CITV's "Knightmare" and the box-art for "Ghoulies". So zombie apocalypse? Surely that cant be a good thing? Do I be a boring adult about this? Its making him happy and he didn't seem to be especially warped by the admittedly cartoonish violence. I let it slide but all the time couldn't help feeling I was being an awful babysitter though and tried to at least get him onto a nice calming 15 certificate game like "Batman: Arkham Asylum". But to little avail. 

When he asked to plug in the headset, I figured it'd be fine as the game is a year old and there'll not be many people about at 9am UK / 1am US playing it. And mostly I was right as only two people were about and he managed to piss one of them off when he accidentally threw an axe through their head. As you do. 

The other player stayed on for a while and it was soon clear Jake was having a proper conversation with someone, asking them tips and the like. This genuinely put the fear of god into me as it could have been any old creep and certainly was unlikely to be a kid at this time of day so I suddenly in one fell swoop understood why parents are such idiots, particularly after reading newspapers. As it happened, it WAS a kid - an American 13 year old to be precise - or at least that what they said anyway but here was definitely no responses along the lines of "3 inch on the slack, why do you ask?" so I figured it was probably alright.

Eventually, he came off the game and even ate his packed lunch after several attempts. This wasn't because he was defying me in any way but rather that he was genuinely so excited to be at my house, playing cool games and feeling a bit special that he was behaving like a giddy meerkat with ADD. It felt nice to be an adult if just for a few hours - I like the idea of kids more than actually ever having my own. Giving them back at the end of the day is just A-OK with me.

And I think Jake went home basically the same shape as he arrived in...

...Ish.