People are so disappointing.

And you know who are the worst in the bunch? Little kids.

My 9-year-old niece is visiting me this weekend so she can go to the county fair. And I hate to say it, but she has been such a disappointment.

The first thing was when she got here, she plopped down in front of the TV even though I had lined up a whole bunch of special chores for her to do around the house.

Despite the truly odd and inappropriate looks that the Little Missuss gave me every time I brought up the subject of special chores before our niece arrived, I was really looking forward to having her here as a guest and the extra amount of household labor that she would be able to do that has unfairly been placed on my honey-do list in recent weeks.

In fact, I purposefully put off doing some of my own chores around the house in anticipation of the impending visit.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I am lazy. I put almost every spare minute I had available into creating a mental list of the household chores my little niece could do.

Unfortunately, it was only a mental list, as I just didn’t have time to get up off the couch and find a pen and paper to write down all the chores and good deeds I knew my niece would want to tackle upon her arrival.

I also imagined how excited my niece would get when I told her about how she could help out around the ranch, and how her eyes would glow with anticipation of earning a quarter here and a quarter there — reseeding the lawn, putting new caulking on the sink in the basement, other simple stuff.

I could almost imagine, as well, her infectious giggles as she tackled each chore with gusto amid the anticipation of a growing stack of coins, which would come in quite handy when we hit the fair, I would tell her.

Well, my little niece arrived and, sadly, she seemed uninterested in any chores or the itinerary of household fun I had set out for her.

I blame her mother, who had given her $29 for the fair.

My niece told me, thank you very much, that she did not need to do chores because she was quite well off, you know, and would I mind going to get her doll out of the car? There was a quarter for me in the deal if I did.

In hopes of inspiring a stronger work ethic, I turned on the Olympics for her to watch the other night.

I remembered when I was a kid and watched the Olympics. It gave me the dream of Olympic glory, and for weeks after the torch was extinguished, I put my 60-pound body through the paces of daily workouts and sweat-filled sessions of lifting weights in the basement.

It was like the time I watched my first playoff basketball game when I was 8 or so and decided I was going to be the next Larry Bird.

Or, as he was known to me at the time, Barry Leard.

I went out in the driveway with the devotion not seen since the young hoopsters of “Hoosiers” made ball meet basket.

I shared my tale of childhood athletic training that was worthy of some of the youngsters now seen in Beijing with my niece, and the Little Missuss immediately grew suspicious and called my mother for verification.

She said any stories of lifting weights in the basement were false, unless I was referring to a basket of laundry I carried down there once. She also disputed my rigorous basketball training regime as a youth, and said I got bored after 20 minutes or so of shooting free throws my first time out, and then started to see if I could throw the ball over the top of the backboard and get it stuck on the roof of the garage.

That last part may have been true. I seem to recall getting paid a quarter by one of the brothers Kelly to go up and fetch the ball a week later.

Next issue: Fear of flight.