Eau De Teen Boy

Last week I was informed Axe was on his wishlist.  He even found samples of his preferred scent and shared them with me.  His sister described it perfectly - lemon pledge.  But she relented and made that his birthday gift - shampoo, deodorant, and body spray.

Oh lovely, the dreaded body spray, the death knell to noses everywhere.

I asked if she taught him how to use it.  Gratefully, yes.  Just two little squirts.  He is aware of other boys, classmates, who over-indulge.  Well, he's aware of other people's comments of boys who over-indulge in their stink products.  I'm convinced boys have under-developed noses.  I mean, how else could they sleep in that stench?  So it only makes sense they don't know how much cologne is enough or too much.  And like food, more is better.  Right?

But there is a larger issue looming.  WHY he wants to douse his body in lemon pledge instead of reveling in his own personal stink?  This can only mean the worst thing ever - girls.  My baby has finally discovered girls.

And being the social slut extrovert he is, I would imagine a whole harem following him around, giggling at his stupid jokes, batting their evil little over-mascara'd lashes at him, and scribbling hearts around his name on their notebooks.


I should know.  I met his father when we were fourteen and had the craziest crush on his stupid ass for years.  I know this road QUITE well. 

Dammit.

Boys At Play

Even after growing up with two brothers I am still amazed at the physical nature of boys.  It's constant contact of fighting and wrestling, even from the quietest, most sedate of males.  And they don't outgrow it either.  Put two grown men together, long time friends, and their first handshake is a fierce grip threatening to melt into a tumbling pile on the ground right before our eyes.  Brothers are possibly the worst.  They roll and tumble over their mother's livingroom floor, chase each other through the backyard.  I imagine as they age and fall out of shape the running and tumbling will reduce, but I see my brothers, both in their late thirties, with a glint in their eyes of "catch me if you can."

Here is my son, Keith, with my friend's son Tyler, terrorizing our vacation house, Keith displaying his brute strength.  All of the smaller kids were hoisted up and tossed onto couches, no different than when they were frolicking in the ocean just hours earlier.

Picking each other up is the best sort of fun, at least for the boys.  The day Keith could pick up his big sister was a day of triumph.  They each had differing versions, one gloating the other horrified, of how he was able to grab her and threaten to toss her over the railings at school (exactly what a mother wants to hear).  And now Ian, just hair (literally) shorter than his sister, is able to lift her off the ground.

This is not how girls play and this is why mothers stand screeching for their children to pipe down (well, one of many reasons).  We don't understand the inner animal of our male children, the NEED to be physical.

Brothers and Sons

WHOA!

One of the most difficult parts of having sons is that they remind me so much of my little brothers. To be honest, I was a horrible big sister. I teased, I tormented, I schemed and I set them up. So being the MOM of two squirty little boys really presents a problem for this woman that has been a mean big sister for most of her life. It's like karmic retribution or something.

For the most part I've behaved myself, but it's been difficult. There have been times I've had the irresistible urge to push either one into the dirt and laugh like a maniac - woo good parenting skills. Speaking of parenting skills, no one warns you what to do when these urges come on. If I lived in the days when women carried fans I would probably spend a good part of the time burying the screwed up look on my face behind one. Instead I've had to physically turn around. Other parents think it's to mask laughing outright at the goofiness of boys being boys, which okay, I've done that a lot too, but there have been times it has been to hide that weird look of shock of someone experiencing a flashback. My sons have done a lot of things that are dead on replications of their uncles twenty years earlier. It could be a smirk on their face, a tone of voice (actually the voices are nearly identical so this one hits me a lot), an obsession over a toy, but more often than not it's just boys being boys, wrestling, rough housing, running, or trying to eat something off the ground.

My way to cope with the conundrum is to step away from my mom-self AND my inner-big-sister and just watch the whole scene from a third party point of view. I think this is what has given me a quirky view of parenting in general.

So basically, as usual, it's all my brothers' fault.

Boys, Boy Parts, & Stupid Games

WHOA!

WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA

Last night I had to use my MOM VOICE - the loud, screechy, sit-your-ass-down-before-I-ground-you-forever tones that set children the world around on edge. After twenty some years at this parenting game I've even mastered "The Look" and "The Point", things you see sweet little southern old ladies execute flawlessly causing grown men to quiver in their boots. I don't know that I have that effect over grown-ups other than the ones that actually emerged from my very own uterus. With time, maybe?

It seems my sons, ages 20 and 12, have taken up a new past-time - sucker punching each other in the crotch. Oh it's great fun, don't you know? Toppling your six foot brother into a twitching blob on the livingroom floor or catching your twerpy little brother in mid-flight running across the bedroom. Yes good times.

NOT!!!!

Dammit, this gonad attack could seriously alter my future as a grandmother (not that I want or need that to happen ANY time in the near future. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE wait. PLEASE! And by all means, WEAR A CONDOM if you can't wait. PLEASE).

Besides, I really do not want to deal with nut sack injuries that might require me to apply ice, extract lodged zippers and certainly not a trip to the ER. It's really bad enough that I happened to be present when the nurse removed a catheter - something a woman does not ever want to witness with her grown, man-sized son. Really. I could use a little Etch-A-Sketch eraser action to get that out of my memory.

I've mulled this over with several other mothers and we all agree that this qualifies as "stupid boy behavior." This may, however, take the cake going beyond TYPICAL stupid boy behavior.

Whatever the reasoning, whatever the pleasure or sense of revenge, it is quite clear that my sons are braindead both above and below the belt.

Eau De Boy

WHOA!

My youngest is twelve - in the throes of boy stink. I worked for many years in an elementary school and noticed that the fifth graders start to reek right around mid-March. I joked that as the sap starts to churn through the trees, so does the hormones through the kids. And at twelve, in seventh grade, the odor has not receded.

Having one son already pass through these stages, I know that another smelly stage is coming probably around ninth grade - the swimming in cologne stage. I guess I should be grateful that he didn't turn to Axe. Someone had alerted him to the new scents of Old Spice, and like their advertisements say, "this isn't your father's cologne."

I remember in college two particular boys, Clark and Kenny. They were two incredible pieces of manliness, both baseball players with chiseled bodies. As if the vision of this duo walking across campus wasn't enough, they wore Polo. I know many people who retract thinking of the guys who wore Polo back in the '80's but for me and Vicki and Barb that particular smell will forever mean Clark and Kenny. Better yet, they were friends with Vicki's boyfriend and often were found visiting my dorm room. Hours after their departure people would come into our room and say, "mmmmmm... Clark and Kenny were here." You could smell them. In a good way. ...sigh!

Years later I still stop at the men's cologne counter and sniff that emerald bottle of Polo, recalling those years of Clark and Kenny. Swoon. There is nothing like a GOOD cologne on a man. It seems that the good looking guys master smelling good. So imagine walking past your own bathroom and catching a whiff of delicious man cologne and realizing it's YOUR SON emitting it??? I swear I had to find a place to sit down to absorb that conflicting information.

While it's nice to have a reprieve from years of stinky sweaty boy, I wonder if it's an improvement? It does make me believe that boys have, in fact, no capacity to smell. Why else would they be able to live with their stinky feet or how could they bathe in such strong colognes?