Life With Boys

We all pile in the car. The pregnant lady, her husband, and a fifteen-year-old boy crammed in the back seat, and it is all boy elbows and boy knees and boy voices conversing about boy topics. I make my first observation:

Boys are startlingly smelly.

I accompany my dad to Costco. In the car on the way there we listen to my dad's latest Dean Koontz book on tape, something about Frankenstein, clones, and Montana. 

When we get there we stand at the entrance to the Costco, my dad visually assessing the situation. "Okay. The chips are in that corner, the cheese is over here, and the condiments are there. Cheese first. Let's go." 

In less than five minutes we're done. We have the cheese, we have the chips, we are tossing a giant barrel of mayonnaise into the cart. We tag-team the self checkout and seconds later are halfway to the car.  No lingering by the flowers, no free samples in the deli, no wandering through the bakery and asking, "Can you think of any reason we'd need this Boston Cream Pie?" (This is how our last Costco trip went, a trip dominated mostly by women.)

Observation: 

Boys are efficient, not at all tempted by carbohydrates.

I find The Holbs upstairs playing Mario Kart. Mario Kart is a thing which I will never truly understand. Blake and Brandon clock hours on that game whenever we come in town. Deciding this was the perfect exercise to get into the mind of a boy, I asked if I can play.

"Hang on," says my Holbsykong. "I have to finish this tournament so I can get a prize!"

"A prize?" I ask.

"Yeah, a prize. That's what Blake told me." 

"What kind of prize?" I ask.

"Uhhhh..." The Holbs can't remember.

"Blake, what kind of prize?" 

Blake is sitting at the computer, playing some shoot 'em up game while wearing a headset and occasionally shouting things like We need scouts! and Soviet Union, I love that! He pulls a headphone off of his ear and shouts at me, "HUH?" His desk is covered in spare wires and mystery USB plugs and parts and pieces of who even knows what.

"What am I going to win again?" The Holbs asks, his face a mask of focus and determination.

"Oh, a new character," Blake says, never peeling his eyes from his computer screen.

This all sounds highly anticlimactic to me, but The Holbs says, "Yeahh, a new character!" as though he is deeply satisfied.

Observation:

I don't even know.

This afternoon my mother and I had lunch with my new best friend, Kjrsten. We ate mini waffle-and-fried-chicken sandwiches on long skinny plates.

Once back in my car I open my phone to communicate with my manlier half.

"I'm coming home, are you ready to spend some time with me?" 

"Yessireebob!" he texts back.

"We'll do whatever you want to do, you pick!" I text generously.

"Let's play board games! Or we could go see a movie? Your dad doesn't want to see Eclipse!"

Then he texts me again,

"No more texts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Observation:

Boys prefer in-person conversations. Sometimes they do want to see Eclipse, and sometimes they don't.

Lately Peter Pan is stuck to me like a love-starved teenager. He follows me aimlessly about the house, and as soon as I'm stationary he sits primly on my foot, his ears cocked in nervous directions. Something is up with him, I am telling you. (It is as if he is thinking there is something up with me?) When it is time for a potty break The Holbs has to drag Peter away from me. The minute they are back in the house the Pan is glued to my side.

Observation:

Boys love their mamas. 

Bring on the boys!