I was having dinner alone, (Twinkies and half a bag of Double Stuff Oreos) sitting on my couch and watching the Astros game, when my sister-in-law, Toni called.

“Something bad happened,” she said.

The bad thing she was referring to was my brother Alex breaking his legs while playing Othello. (He really gets into it!) Toni asked me if I would watch their kids while he was in the hospital and she was at work. Of course I said, “If there’s no one else who can do it, I guess I have to.”

I’ve never really liked children. I’m not a big fan of screaming and whining and irrationality -- all kid staples. But Ava (six) and Tyler (ten) were my family. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

The little brats were dropped off at my place, and my sister-in-law gave me a million phone numbers to all, just in case. Ava has her mother’s blond hair. It’s long and thin and shiny as threads of gold in the summer sun. When I hugged her, she said, “Your breath smells like poopie.”

Tyler was a spaz. His dark-brown bowl cut unfortunately didn’t cover his ugly, bugged out eyes. And his mouth yapped like it was powered by the Energizer bunny. He ran circles around my furniture, and I wondered if it’d be wrong to put horse tranquilizer in his Capri-Sun to calm him down. I had some in the medicine cabinet. Hmm…

I handed the kids some sunflower seeds and suggested we eat the tasty snacks while watching the game.

Ava said, “I don’t like basey ball. I wanna watch Dora.”

I turned to her brother, “You like baseball, right, Tyler?”

He shook his head before doing a back flip off of my coffee table. I buckled and gave this Dora the Explorer a try. It was a dumb kid’s show where a little girl walks around talking to monkeys and maps. It was full of Spanish. What, is English not good enough for our children anymore?

Ava pulled on my leg during the show, and I thought she was going to apologize for saying she didn’t like America’s pastime. Instead she said that she was hot and asked if I would turn on the “AZ.” I corrected her and decided to turn on the AC before she had a chance to whine. Tyler broke my favorite coffee mug. Apparently he had gotten a hold of my sledgehammer.

“Be careful with that,” I told him.

It had been about ten minutes with the kids and my blood pressure was already rising. This Dora show was getting on my nerves. Ava sang along to every inane song. Tyler started crying after hitting one of his fingers with the sledgehammer. I needed a beer. I pulled out a Stella Artois and sipped on it with my feet up.

Ava asked for some beer and told her, “Silly, I’m not giving you this. You haven’t had any food.”

They hadn’t touched the sunflower seeds, and I know they hadn’t eaten since lunch.

“But you have to share,” she said through the gap in her smile.

The words jostled me. “Have to share.” She went on to explain the sharing rule, and what I realized then scared me into a sweating fit.

These children were communists.

They had been brainwashed by the Reds and sent hear to tear apart our lives of liberty. Of course they didn’t like baseball. They’d surely prefer hockey or traitor-hunting. Of course they liked Dora -- she speaks the language of Castro. And of course she thought my nice, cool apartment was hot. These mini-spies were used to the frozen wastelands of Siberia. And claiming sharing to be a requirement? Lenin himself, couldn’t be prouder.

If my brother’s kids had fallen victim to this warping of the mind, how many others had suffered the same fate? I knew I had a lot of fighting ahead of me, and it started with my own flesh and blood. I had to do some reverse brain-washing. I had my niece and nephew watch clips of Babe Ruth, listen to that John Mellencamp song (“This is OUR country!”), fed them apple pie and double cheeseburgers and KFC bowls, and made them read the Declaration of Independence and listen Ann Coulter.

When my brother got out of the hospital, he noticed the difference right away.

“What the hell did you do to my kids?” he shouted.

“I saved them,” I told him and didn’t wait for a thank-you gift card. I walked outside and started reprogramming all of America’s Children. I took off red shirts off kids in the store and handed them Alan Jackson tees in replacement. I smashed Dora lunchboxes and traded the debris for Captain America lunch pails.

It may take years, but I won’t rest until the little rug rats of this nations are singing “America the Beautiful” until their throats bleed.