Tag: the boy

So the boy got a bit of a treat, courtesy the brother yesterday. Someday, if he remembers, he may even come to appreciate the opportunity for just how unique it was. He got to go out on the 50-yard line of the game during halftime while the brother was honored with his jersey being retired.

We started up in the stands and the boy was plenty curious about the game. He wanted to know which team he was supposed to root for; what endzone they were trying to score in; how long the game was and on and on. He maintained interest until one of his cousins started playing Angry Birds on a cell-phone. Hard to compete with that I suppose.

But with about 10 minutes to go in the 2nd quarter, I told him that there was going to be a surprise. He immediately wanted to know what it was, but I just smiled and said it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told him. He tried a couple of guesses, but I wouldn’t acknowledge his guesses and he gave up trying.

The media guy came up to get us with about 5 minutes remaining in the half. In this case, “us” consisted of myself, the sister, the Mom and Dad, the brother’s fiancee, the boy, a former teammate and a current football buddy. As we walked down to the stairs that would let us on the field, the boy turned and asked with a smile “Is this the surprise?” I nodded in reply.

So we stood on the home sidelines waiting for the half to end. There were pictures taken and handshakes and high-fives and all. The team mascot strutted by and stopped to give the boy a high-five. But mainly, he kept a low-profile, preferring to watch and take it all in. I suggested he turn around and look up at the stands (probably about 30,000 in attendance), but he wouldn’t lift his head to do so. Instead, he just turned with a sheepish grin and instead looked at my boots.

I asked him if he was having fun, but he apparently didn’t want to say anything either. Just more sheepish grins. He was watching the long-snapper warm-up and the players mingle around the bench in front of us. My brother and I are pretty good sized, but I tend to think the players must have looked larger than life to him all suited up.

Then the moment finally arrived. As we started to walk out, I had to nudge him a little as he dragged his feet. But right around the numbers, he saw his uncle leading the way and became more comfortable. There were some brief introductions and he heard his name announced on the loudspeaker; that resulted in a big grin on his face as he turned to look up at me. Then they were playing highlights from the brother’s career on the jumbo-tron, finishing with a live shot of us standing behind him on the field as he was presented with his framed playing jersey.

The whole thing ended with the brother holding up his framed jersey for the stands as the crowd gave him an ovation for time well-served. As we were walking back to the sidelines, I looked around a little wondering if this would be the last time I’d be on a field. When we got back to the sidelines, I said “You know, when you’re out there playing, you don’t even notice the people in the stands. You’re just worried about your teammates and the guys across the ball from you. What do you think, you want to be back out there someday?”

Another wordless grin. And then, a little nod of his head.

Then it was my turn to smile.

Since it was to be a bit cooler on Saturday during the campout, I suggested to the boy that he bring one of his heavier sweat coats. It’s basically perfect for Fall and early Spring temps and, having a zipper, I figured it would be easier to take off than a sweatshirt.

My suggestion led to the one spot of trouble the boy had. He couldn’t find the coat and started getting upset. The thing of it is, I could tell that he’d barely looked it, and I let him know as much. My boldness only served to agitate him more. By the end of it, I was ticked off because he’d barely put any work into finding it; and, he was ticked off because he couldn’t find it and I refused to find it for him. He ended up going with just a pullover sweatshirt.

Fast-forward to this morning. He’s getting ready to head out to the car so I can take him to school. Lo and behold, he’s wearing the very sweatcoat in question. I paused a moment and then said “Well, well- where was that?” His initial reluctance to answer was all the answer I needed. It had been on the coat rack all along. But to admit so would also be admitting that he hadn’t looked very well.

So he improvised: “I don’t know how it got there! I looked before and it wasn’t there. This morning it was. Really!” His statement that high-toned, defensive quality that kids get when they’re actively trying to obfuscate a situation.

Sigh.

I didn’t say anything. I just smirked at him. He didn’t particularly care for that. Eventually, he stalked out to the car in a huff.

The kicker is, we’ll replay this whole act again. It’s a matter of when, not if. Lessons are taught until they’re learned.

After the boy’s soccer game yesterday afternoon, we made the trek up to a Scout cabin for a Pack sponsored overnight campout. The facility we stay at is pretty good, as these things go. The cabin is an open room, about 20×40 with bathroom facilities (no showers) and a reasonable kitchen. Outdoors, the land the cabin sits on was donated to the Scouts and has a couple of nice hiking trails and a couple of campground spots nearby. It sits atop a hill, so the view is pretty good on Fall evenings. Our pack typically uses the facility because it’s low cost, high value and fun. Yesterday was no exception.

The boy and I didn’t get up there in time for the hiking, but he got a chance to participate in the various games of tag, manhunt, hide-and-seek and what not with all of his buds. Dinner was a pot-luck format with a campfire that followed. Once the lights out time started approaching, we herded the boys up into the cabin for board games and getting ready for bed.

Lights out is a rather misleading term in all but the most literal sense. They did in fact go out at 10, but the kids were by no means ready to go to sleep. We had to suffer through a period of them getting the remainder of their sillies out of them. Air mattresses were squeaking, flashlight were going on and off, fake snoring was prevalent, loudly blurted “I can’t sleep because there’s too much noise” were prevalent and, generally, other sorts of antics that occur at just about any slumber party.

The most ironic part is that all of the boys did fall asleep eventually, with a cacophony of half-snores, deep breathing, and restless-turners serving as testimony. Many of us parents, including myself, weren’t so lucky. The dawn didn’t exactly come quickly, but it did arrive and we were awake to watch it do so. The kids woke up rested and raring to go. In the meantime, the parents were hooking up to coffee feeds in the kitchen.

The nicest moment, for myself, happened on the ride home. One of the boy’s fellow Wolf Scouts had run into a pricker bush during the games yesterday. Poor kid caught his eyelid on a thorn and was, understandably, none to pleased with the circumstances. The boy, on his own, chose to walk with his friend back to the cabin (and away from the still ongoing games) to keep him company and make sure that he was OK (he was). The boy was telling me that on the ride home and said “‘Cause that’s what Scouts do, right Dad? They help each other.”

Well, that’s what they tell me. But it’s still nice to see it put to practice every now and again. Pleasant surprises like that make the long nights more bearable.

The boy seems to have decided that he really wants to earn his black belt. In order to achieve that he has to enroll in a what his school calls “Black Belt Club.” (Don’t start with the “No one talks about Black Belt Club jokes…) Aside from a means of getting a little higher tuition fee from the students, I think it’s a pre-screening method for those students whom really want to earn a black belt. To join the Club, a student has to write a letter of intent to the instructors explaining why they wish to earn a black belt.

To help the kids in writing the letter, the School provides a bunch of questions to answer. Following are the questions along with the boy’s answers (italicized). The answers are his own words.

1. Why do I want to be in the Black Belt club?

   Make me better at karate
   Learn more forms
   I want to be a black belt

2. What do I enjoy about martial arts? Where am I challenged?

   I enjoy the self-defenses and competitions/games
   I am challenged by sparring

3. What do martial arts do for my character and me?

   Helped me get better at stuff I used to not be able to do before I joined karate. I used to give up on stuff that was really hard, but now I don’t.

4. What does achieving a Black Belt mean to me?

   Means being able to protect myself, make me happy because most people don’t become Black Belts because it’s hard and it takes awhile.

5. What kind of person receives a Black Belt- in your mind- and how/why is that your goal?

   That person is willing to do extra practice
   Do his best/ try hard
   Has patience
   Helps me learn stuff so I don’t get scared or anything like that.

I had to help him understand what the questions meant, but the words above are his. The Wife will help him turn that into a letter eventually. I thought it was a pretty good effort for a 7 year old. I will say he focused more on the physical side of martial arts, as opposed to the mental aspects. In other words, his responses always started from the physical side. But I was able to make him understand that many of the question were more attuned to the mental side of the discipline.

It’s the weekend, which means the boy gets to play with his DS and on the Wii as well.

Sweet!

But the games he plays frustrate him and his coping skills are somewhat… wanting. Listening to his cries of anguish as yet another Mario life bites the dust, one would think he was undergoing some kind of exquisite torture. Well, I suppose he is, in his own fashion.

Sour!

On the way home from his martial arts class the boy asked me if I’d want to play Lego Star Wars on the Wii with him. He’d received a gift card a while back (to GameStop) and hadn’t spent it all in one place. He really wanted to buy another Wii or DS game so the Wife and I relented on the ground that, it’s his money anyway and we couldn’t really tell him ‘No.’ At least, not defensibly in our view.

Anyway, I answered by way of informing him that one of his friends would probably be coming over this weekend so I wasn’t sure. The information had the desired effect and he said “Well maybe he and I can play, right?”

I then went into my boilerplate response: “Well, if it’s rainy outside this weekend then maybe, but if it’s nice out then you guys are going to go play outside, not sit in the basement playing video games.”

And then, in a moment of jesting I ribbed him a little: “Besides, maybe he’ll do something and won’t be allowed to play video games. Or maybe you’ll do something and we’ll take video games away from you for the weekend. There’s a lot of time between now and Saturday.” I said it all with a smile so he knew I was joking and that I didn’t actually expect him to blow it. He replied he could do stuff to earn more Wii time and I told him that was a good attitude to have.

And then we got home.

Five minutes later, I’m preparing turkey burgers and I hear a commotion outside. The lass then comes running in as the Wife is heading out to investigate.

The lass says her brother hit her. I squeezed the wad of ground turkey, swore, scraped it off and started again with that patty.

So the Wife is calling him back in the house and asking if he hit her. He owns up to it but add “But only because she hit me.” The Wife then turns on the lass, who gets the words “I didn’t do it hard…” out of her mouth before the Wife acts with the swift, brutal sword of exasperation. I mangled another turkey patty.

Even before she passed judgment, I’m thinking it in my head. Then she pulls me into it: “You know what I’m thinking Dad? ” she yells over to me. I’m shaking my head as my earlier conversation with the boy is replaying in my head “I’m guessing it was something to do with the Wii and DS,” I answer. And then she makes it official, “I’m tired of this stuff from you two this week, every day after school you’re fighting with one another. Now, no video games this weekend, the Wii, DS or MobiGo.”

A short while later, the boy comes walking through the kitchen. I shake my head and ask him what he was thinking. He blurts out “I know. You were right. I’m so stupid!”

It was almost a classic “I told you so” moment. The only catch was I’d truly been kidding in the car. Or more accurately, I wasn’t wishing for him to screw up. Regardless, it was an unusual moment where I wish I’d been wrong.

Yesterday was a better one for the boy. No problems with “Mrs. Yell”. In fact, he referred to her by her actual name. I figure all of her students got the message regarding who’s in charge of the class; they lost in mass. Good for the teacher I say.

I was talking with the Dad last night and he was chuckling about the whole thing. He felt it a positive that the boy have a teacher who “makes them tow the line” as he put it. I actually agree with him. Most teachers I’ve met use lots of manipulation techniques to keep kids in line: combinations of appeasement and negotiation like threats of timeouts and rewards like extra recess time and such. I don’t see the harm in giving them a bit of good ol’ fashion bull headed “sit down and be quiet because that’s my way.” There’s more than a few employers who bring that kind of heat, kids should be exposed to it so they have some experience dealing with it. I’ll dip into my own experience and note that there were more than a few teachers like that back in my grade school experience, I managed just fine. I don’t see why this generation can’t manage similarly.

But enough about all that. I also wanted to mention that the boy did something very gracious yesterday. It was my birthday and he and the lass made me cards. The boy’s card even included a handmade envelope, all taped up. Inside the card he made me was a one dollar bill. He actually took the money out of his own piggy bank to give me as a gift.

I thanked him for it but refused as I’m pretty sure parental etiquette requires me to do. But he insisted, so rather than fight it out then, I let it be. The Wife discussed it with him a bit later and he told her he just wanted to give me some money to help “pay the bills and stuff.” The Wife explained that was very nice of him but Mom and Dad worry about the bills for now, not him. She further explained that his piggy bank money is money for him to spend on himself. After that, he took his dollar back.

I’ll have to find some other way to pay the bills now.

The boy has spent most of his time outside the past two days going through the rocks in our driveway looking for gold. He has managed to find a number of them with gold-ish flecks all over. When I offered that it was likely “fools gold,” he referenced his minerals book and showed how the color of the gold in the books was different from the color of the gold on the rocks. There was no convincing him otherwise.

After finding them, he wanted to weigh the rocks because he understands more gold means more value. Unfortunately, his understanding was not complete. He was only thinking about the weight of the rock rather than the weight of the gold in the rock.

Once he understood that he had to remove the gold from the rock, he wanted to know how he could do it. When I told him I didn’t know, he became proactive and asked if he could look it up on the Internet. We were able to find some explanations of how gold is extracted from ore but they are not something that can be duplicated at home. Much to the boy’s chagrin I might add.

For the moment, his dreams of finding enough gold to buy Nintendo DS games will have to wait.

I’m down here doing a little surfing before lunch and the kids are upstairs playing Operation. Buzz Lightyear style, that is.

Much as I’d like, I can’t quite tune out the conversation as they are playing. But the one that I pickup on in particular has to do with the fundamental component of the game: when the buzzer sounds, you’ve messed up.

Well, apparently, the boy has determined that because he can’t see or feel the probe touch the side, the machine must be wrong. So he gets to do it over again. The lass, unfortunately, doesn’t grasp the implications of the boy’s statement and says “OK.” Or maybe she does, but figures she’ll use it to her own advantage.

Regardless, I then keep here variations on the following sequence: buzzer sounds; followed by the boy saying “HUH?!?! I didn’t even touch it! Did you see me touch?”; followed by another attempt at removing a piece.

Initially, I figured that I’m down here, they’re up there and just leave it at that. Why should I stick my nose in it, especially since they aren’t exactly at each other’s throats. Besides, if I say something they’ll probably stop playing altogether.

But then my stricter side takes over. No, it says. What’s the point of playing the game if they aren’t going to adhere to the rules? There’s only 1 challenge to that game and it’s all based on honoring the buzzer. Besides, that game doesn’t “malfunction”, the boy does. If you don’t say something, what’s to stop him from deciding to ignore other rules don’t suit him?

So my stricter side won out. I called up to him “That game isn’t broken. It’s buzzing because you’re touching the side. It doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Well, sometimes it DOES. I can’t even see when I’ve touched the side.” he called back. More that a little defensively.

“No, it doesn’t mess up. If you start saying it can make a mistake, then you can use that excuse anytime you want. If it buzzes, you touched the side.” I called back.

He didn’t reply any further. A few minutes later, they stopped playing.

Way to go, hardass.

Last night at dinner, the Wife ordered clam cakes.

“Are their clams in clam cakes?” the boy asked. He and the lass, both, seem incapable of accepting as fact some minimal level of truth-in-advertising. Or naming.

But his question provided me with an opening for mischief, and I took it.

“Of course it’s got clams in it. Shells and all.”

He was initially skeptical “No it doesn’t,” he retorted.

“Sure it does. You know what clams are right?” He nods. “Well, have you ever seen a clam without a shell? Of course not. They cover the whole thing with dough and fry it up. You just have to be careful to chew it in the back of the mouth so you don’t break any of your teeth.” I said all this matter-of-factly, like it was common knowledge. The Wife was sitting next to him rolling her eyes.

If he’d been thinking, he’d have picked up on my half-truths. But clearly he wasn’t, as he sat back and considered what I said.

Though to his credit, he still wasn’t completely buying it. When the clam cakes finally arrived, he asked his Mother if there really were clam shells in it. She answered “No.” But I stepped in quickly:

“Of course their are. Look, I’ll prove it- listen…” I said. I picked up a clam cake and took a bite from a crustier area and asked “There, did you hear the crunching of the shell?” He nodded. The Wife was staring at me with an incredulous look, but she said nothing. I think she was shocked at his gullibility.

I’ll also note, she didn’t step into to call me on my bluff. That’s called “complicity.”

The boy decided to try a clam cake. Just before he bit into it, I told him to be careful where he bit to make sure he wasn’t trying to bite through a shell. He took it from his mouth and looked around the clam cake and chose a different spot to bite in. When I ask if he’d bitten into a shell, he shook his head. I gave him a thumbs-up sign to indicate a good job of choosing where to bite.

As it turned out, he liked the clam cake and finished the whole thing. When he was done, he mentioned to me that he didn’t think his had a clam shell in it because there hadn’t been anything crunchy.

“Well, probably, the cooking process softened up the shell. That happens sometimes when you fry stuff.” That seemed to settle the whole matter. The Wife’s eye were doing somersaults at this point. But she still didn’t step in to set him straight.

The entire time, I kept expecting him to look at me and call me on my bluff, ridiculous as it was. But he never did.

I’ll have to up the ante for the next time.

Somewhere along life’s unpredictable path, the boy picked up on the concept of gold hunting. It showed yesterday when he demonstrated a fierce case of gold fever at his swim lessons. He started picking up every rock he could find that he thought might have gold in it. He’d bring it to me, I’d tell him “No, there’s no gold in it”, he’d drop it with a disappointed look so I’d describe what he should be looking for, then he’d come back 30 seconds later saying “Dad, this looks like gold…”

Initially, it was amusing. But after the 5th or 6th iteration (I lost count), it got irritating. The fact that I was in the middle of reading a book and he kept interrupting me right about the time I figured out where to pick up from the previous interruption didn’t help.

The most amusing moment? When he revealed one of his motivations for the gold hunting.

“Dad, how much is gold worth?”

“It depends on how much of it you have. It’s worth about $400 dollars and ounce. So, the more you have the more you can get.” I just checked and it seems I considerably low-balled the value- it’s more like $1600 an ounce. Oh well, his eyes still popped a bit when I told him the numbers.

“So I could buy, like, a DS and some games with it. Right?”

“Well, yes. If you had an ounce or more.”

“So if this were gold would it be enough?” He held up a pebble a little bigger than a dime in circumference.

I chuckled. “Well, that’s probably an ounce so if it were all gold then yes. But you won’t find a piece of gold just lying there like that. It’ll be a small part of the rock, so there will be a lot less gold than the rock itself. That means you’ll need to find a whole bunch of those rocks.”

That didn’t seem to phase him in the slightest and he continued to bring me rocks he was sure had gold in them. When I mentioned the concept of fools gold, he decided that he would consult a rock and minerals book we have at home so he would be able to recognize fools gold and it wouldn’t “fool” him. He also figured he’d have better luck looking for gold back at the house, so we wrapped everything up and headed home.

Once we got home, he educated himself on fools gold and then started searching for gold out in back yard.

I just told him to let me know when he found something.

I heard his bellow from outside. It was hard to tell exactly what he was yelling about. In fact, at first I thought he was yelling at his sister. Since the Wife was still working, I headed inside to quiet him down and remind him about respecting his Mother’s need for a little quiet.

But when I got inside, it turned out the Wife was dealing with it. All I saw was the boy charging down the stairs with steam coming out of his ears. Upstairs, I could hear the bemused tone in the Wife’s voice, so I figured all was well and left it at that.

The Wife took a break a bit later to fill me in on what had happened.

The boy had jumped down a couple of the stairs. He slipped and fell when he landed. Luckily, our stairs have a turn in them and the larger steps there served to stop his falling further down the stairs. It was at this point that he started bellowing.

When the Wife arrived on the scene, it sounded like he was saying that his sister had pushed him. She defended the lass, who had been with her the whole time, stating that the lass “wasn’t anywhere near you.” The boy then recorrected the record:

“A GHOST PUSHED ME!”

The Wife started chuckling at this and he turned and yelled “I BELIEVE IN GHOSTS!” Apparently, that was intended to erase all doubt about what had just transpired. He then headed down the stairs to grab his shoes, and stomped off.

He even attempted to warn us that there’s a ghost in the stairs that likes to make people fall.

I swear, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

The Wife and I were discussing the grill. She’s a little attached to it because she originally got it back when she and I were still dating. It is now showing it’s age, but bears it well. I mentioned that our next one is going to be a Big Green Egg because, well, they’re awesome.

She then defended the honor of our current grill, pointing out how old it was and that it still works very well and does a good job cooking. It’s a Weber propane grill, but I can’t remember the model at this point. Silver line maybe? Anyway, she went on to note that we use it year round, as long as there isn’t snow on it.

“You mean, like, 3 feet of snow?” I snarked, in reference to the ridiculousness that was this past Winter. She smiled and nodded.

The boy then jumped in, “Is this how big 3 feet is Dad?” He was holding his hands about 16 inches apart. I told him “Naaaa” and vertically held my hands roughly 3 feet apart.

His eyes went wide as he pondered that much snow, and then he began to ask a question, “Is that taller than…”

And then, it happened.

He actually, really truly, thought. And I know he did because he did it out loud: “No, that can’t be taller than me because I’m over 4 feet tall and 3 is less than 4.”

I almost fell out of my chair. The occasion was momentous. It was the first time I’d witnessed him answer one of his one questions. The kind of question that, if he did think for a second, he’d realize the answer on his own. The kind of throw away question that he’s been peppering the Wife and I with since he became old enough to ask questions.

Wow.

And it only took 7 years.

Does this mean my job is done?