Through her eyes, I once was the cool uncle.

Everyone who is an uncle should strive to be the cool one. Who wants to be the boring one who talks to the adults during family get-togethers? Who wants to be the one who is always serious?

Cool uncles — the Uncle John effect I call it because everyone’s Uncle John is the favorite — are the ones who drop down to a child’s level (easier for some than others), will gleefully comb the hair of a plastic horse and actually chooses to sit at the kids’ table for supper.

But now the coolness I once possessed in her eyes is slipping backward faster than the soon-to-be-barren head of hair.

“Who was ‘it’ before today’s it, Justin Bieber,” I asked my soon-to-be 9-year-old niece, Rian, over the telephone. “We are sitting here trying to figure out the name of this singer — blond hair, kind of wiry… ? We think he maybe was on Hannah Montana’s show?”

“Ummm,” Rian whispered into the phone, trying in vain to figure out what she was hearing.

“You think you can get on the Internet and try to find out?” I asked. “A friend is here and his daughter listens to this guy and we cannot think of his name. Call me back if you figure it out.”

It wasn’t a case where three creepy old men were sitting discussing teen singers, rather it was three old men trying to fathom the allure of what passes as popular musically these days.

Parents in my generation couldn’t understand the allure of Motley Crue and Public Enemy. Many of our parents’ parents couldn’t understand what was so great about Chuck Berry, the Beatles and Elvis. Maybe it is a sure sign of age when the music the younger generations are into is simply nonsense to others.

When the third member of our crew started reeling off names of today’s it, or yesterday’s it, or tomorrow’s yesterday, the question was answered — someone named Zac Efron.

I immediately called Rian back: “It’s some Zac Efron something or other? Sound familiar?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, blushing perhaps.

One day later, a message was relayed to me from Rian’s mother. “After you hung up, Rian said, ‘Mom, Uncle Murph doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Zac Efron is not blond and he is NOT on the Hannah Montana Show.”

And I am no longer the cool uncle.

•

Sean P. Murphy is web editor. He can be reached at smurphy@vicksburgpost.com