Boys, Bubbles, and Butt-Cracks

If you can believe my Beloved, everything you ever needed to know about boys and friendship can be described in three simple terms: Snow globes, bubbles, and butt cracks. 

I guess I should explain.

Our boychild is on the cusp of, well something. Not entirely sure what yet, but he’s at the tail end of his primary school education and about to move into the high school years.  At the same time, as you’d imagine, he and all his mates are approaching puberty- that wonderful, wonderful time in a parent’s life.

Naturally, there are a lot of changes taking place. But it’s the out-of-body experiences that are causing the most concern.

As we all know, those who sat through sex education classes at school, or even more embarrassingly, “The Talk” our parents gave, boys and girls mature at different rates. In different ways.  At this stage of the game, boys seem to lag behind- physically and emotionally. Here’s the crux of the matter. Not even the boys in my boy’s group are moving at the same pace. Some just aren’t keeping up on the social side.

I won’t go into the gory details but this means a few, well, let’s just call them ‘moments’. And more than one conversation about how to deal with it all.

Since my Beloved has the same hardware as our manchild (if you know what I mean), I have been trying to encourage him to do the father-son thing, and talk to him not only about the physical stuff ahead, but also how to deal with mates. I suspect there is some Post Traumatic Stress about his own memories from a similar age (can’t say I blame him as my own experience wasn’t a walk in the park) so he’s been a little reluctant in approaching this task.  So imagine my utter amazement, not to mention amusement as I overheard their little chat the other night.

After a day at school with a number of ‘moments’, our son was feeling a bit low. I was in the process of settling the girlchild into bed when I wandered past my boy’s bedroom door to overhear the lad and his dad saying something about bubbles, and butt cracks.  “What the?” I muttered, only to be told to move along, it didn’t concern me.

On my return journey the topic seemed to have shifted to snow globes. Again the mystery was not to be revealed as I was again shooed away.

It wasn’t until my son came in the next morning for a chat of our own that he filled in the blanks.

Here’s how it goes.

At the start of every school year all the students are put into different classes, some end up with their friends, and some don’t. Our school’s Principal in particular likes to shake things up. As my Beloved explained, the kids are floating around like the flakes in a snow globe. Some settle pretty quickly, others take a bit more time, but there’s usually one that takes a lot longer to come down. Like our boy’s buddy, he’s taking a while to find his place this year. 

Not a bad analogy I thought. 

Now for the bubbles.  Our son has been with one group of guys since Kindergarten, they are great mates, get along really well for the most part and have stuck together. Like a little bubble. Over the years a few new friends have joined up with our lad, due to extra kids coming to the school, classroom placement, similar interests, whatever. There’s your second bubble.  OK so the two groups occasionally come together, but like two bubbles, never really join up - there’s a line down the middle. According to my Beloved, that’s our lad. A common denominator if you like. (There are actually a couple of the kids who would also make up that line, but for simplicity, and since he was only talking to our son at the time, he was in the middle.)  In imagining how the two bubbles look stuck together but not completely joined, and being typical males, they came up with the image of a butt, and the centre line was- you got it (do I really have to spell it out?)...

After the laughter, our son seemed to get it.

You see, in my Beloved’s opinion, as long as the kids realize that they can all still be friends, even if not totally stuck together all the time, things should settle down eventually, once that last flake finishes floating.

So there you have it. Everything you ever wanted to know about boys, bubbles, and butt cracks. And how to solve friendship problems in adolescent lads.

You can thank me later.

Once you get any unsavoury images out of your head.

Jx

© 2014

Gifted and Talented

There are some people in life who are naturally talented. Gifted in ways others can only imagine.  Maybe they’re athletes who simply excel at any sport they try. Perhaps academics who just ‘get it’ the first time they attempt problem solving of any kind.  Occasionally there are those who seem skilled at carving out a career. Or musical geniuses.  Many, many examples. 

Then there’s the rest of us. The ones who discover we can in fact do certain things we never dreamed possible. Not necessarily with the same sort of success. And only if the circumstances are right. 

We’ve all heard stories of superhuman strength in times of high adrenalin- parents dragging kids out of crashed cars, people holding up heavy objects to prevent injury to others, and me, when I saw smoke coming out of our dryer...I was able to fling the thing out the back door (where it landed -ignominiously for it-upside down). Took two men a lot of grunting to put it back in place when they came to assess it (and surprisingly, it works once again, albeit with a few dents and scratches). 

To a lesser degree it’s how I found I could indeed dance Gangnam Style, after stepping on something sticky on the kitchen floor and being entirely unable to get it off simply by shaking the offending foot. So I stepped on it with the other foot trying to prise it loose without the need for me bending down, only to have it stick to the other side. Hence my horsey dance on alternating feet, to the absolute amusement of my offspring. Did either of those offer to assist? They who are much closer to the ground than their mother, and much more flexible? Not at all. 

It’s kinda like the Spider Dance- you know when you unwittingly walk through a web and start shaking all about trying to get any offending insect off. Voilà!  Instant Breakdancer Extraordinaire!  (Or have I just shown my age and should instead say “Twerker”?) And always with an audience when you least want one. 

Or to take the above example one step further, when Incy Wincy decides to drop in while you’re behind the wheel- you suddenly develop precision driving skills akin to any Formula One racer, trying to get off the road quickly and safely in your blind fear of the thing falling in your lap.  Pity the kids are too young to have a license and can’t take the wheel while you’re trying to find where Wincy went. 

Being summertime here, in a country that claims almost every conceivable venomous creature, there are Spider Dances and precision drivers everywhere you look at the moment.  Numerous social media statuses are stating close encounters of the creepy kind, and not all of them end well. Usually the creepy crawly comes off worse. A friend of mine even said the most romantic thing her husband did for her on Valentine’s Day was to hunt down a Huntsman in her car, and remove it. Everybody now: “Awwwww”. 

No one in my house is fond of the things. My Beloved does his best to rehome the non-nasties and ensure quick if not painless death to others. I’ve been awoken more than once by a tremulous voice from the toilet in the wee small hours calling out for bug spray (and you thought “Redback On The Toilet Seat” was just an old Aussie country & western song)!  But my girlchild takes the cake when it comes to arachnophobia.  Whilst perched alongside me on the bed the other evening, she all but climbed out the window when something fell from the ceiling, right onto Daddy’s pillow.  After careful inspection I realized it was a dead Daddy Long Legs (ironic?) and went to get some toilet paper to pick it up. In either her fear or enthusiasm to assist me (the Jury’s still out on that one) she flicks the thing off the pillowcase and sent it flying Lord knows where, so then I –the aforementioned inflexible mother in the story – had to bend down to the floor looking for it lest it is rediscovered during the night. We’ve all had those experiences and don’t need an encore just now thanks. 

But the helpful thing about this episode was that I rediscovered an ability to not only see my toes, but touch them too; a skill I had thought long-gone.   

So there’s something to be said about finding some inadvertent abilities, and while I may never attain the heights reached by some of those outlined at the start, it’s good to know there are untapped talents still hidden within. As long as the dodgy ones don’t show up with an audience around. 

Jx
© February 2014

The offending (and offended) machine

Sobbing in the Shower

I had a moment this morning. Well if I am being completely honest, and is there really a better place to do so than anonymously on the internet (unless you count Confession and that only applies if you are of that religious persuasion and feel the need to save your soul)…I had more than a moment.  I had a full-blown Good Cry. That term, I feel, should be trademarked if it hasn’t been already (and if it isn’t, and someone does, and makes a lot of money, I call dibs on commission for the idea), as there are few other terms that instantly bring to mind the precise scenario you try to define.

Don’t say you’ve never been there: lip quivering, nose tingling, eyes brimming, with the bonus chest and stomach pain reserved for those really special occasions. Whether you’ve been holding it in for a while, or it’s brought on by a sucker-punch of a situation, there is nothing so overwhelming yet cathartic at the same time. A Good Cry is best kept until you’ve reached the privacy of your car, your bedroom, or in my case the bathroom. 

Coincidentally (or not, perhaps) it was while I was standing under the shower, spraying cleanser onto the screen, that I felt the urge to weep.  Faced with the task of scrubbing soap scum that no one else in my family seems to see, I felt a somewhat inexplicable and unfamiliar tremble in my lower lip, burning in my eyes, and off I went.  (On the upside, it's a great place to let the tears flow, along with the runny nose that always seems to accompany A Good Cry, and while it's not a great look at the best of times, at least there's no one there to witness it, unless you've invited others to your Pity Party. I mean, with the mirror fogged, even you can't see how bad you look...)

Anyway, as I attacked the scaly screen I started thinking about all the other household jobs awaiting my attention, started plotting the best order to do them in, dreading the energy expenditure required, and being overcome with an enormous sense of failure on multiple levels.

Long story short, yet relevant to this tale: a Special Needs son (another term that sums it up but one that I’m not so fond of), an unexpected permanent disability of my own, a husband who works split-shifts/dog-watch/14-if-not-24/7 with no massive financial return to show for it, a young daughter who I desperately try to not get lost in all of the above- means our home is not a castle by any stretch of the imagination. Not a Hoarders’ Hovel either, but gives a good impression of one at times- I simply cannot keep up with the housework. Which means that I actually actively discourage visitors, and sleepovers are out of the question altogether. There lies the rub.

Kids are supposed to hang out, have playdates, and stay up all night after too much junk food and rubbish TV. Heck, I did all that and then some when I was young. Not my kids. Our 3 bedroom house does not lend itself to extra bodies, not when in the wisdom of the architect the bedrooms barely hold a bed, let alone extra bedding. With the aforementioned revolting shifts, my Beloved comes and goes, and makes coffee, at all hours of the night, so a kids’ camp in the living room is not doable either (allowing that they will eventually drop off to sleep at some stage).

Add to that my screaming lack of pride in our place, and the never ending load of laundry looking at me on the lounge, and I don’t feel able to offer invitations to other people, or their children.

Why precisely this all caved in on me in the shower this morning, I’m not sure. But the trigger was a photo of 7 smiling faces on facebook- showing all the other girls in my daughter’s class at a birthday party this weekend. Every other female except mine. I know they all play sport together, do various other events, and “face time” for hours on end.  They are a nice group of girls really, they all seem to get along in class, all happily accept the annual invitation to our Halloween Party, and begged my child to get some sort of ‘iProduct ‘ so they could include her (which she did, which they haven’t); and yet the photos keep coming of the rest of the class (of the female variety anyway) hanging out, without my girl.

And I know it’s because our lifestyle- or rather the circumstances of our life- means she cannot join the sporting teams, go on shopping trips, or concerts, or just hang out. There's always another appointment to attend, or not enough time, energy, or money at the end of the day.

So while I have to trust that we are doing the best we can raising our children to hopefully head into adulthood as community-minded, well-educated, decent mannered and socially aware human beings, it’s this in-between period that’s stressing me out.  If they are missing out.

Which brings me back to my scrubbing and sobbing simultaneously in the shower.

And now sees me sitting here scribbling with a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing I’m going to have to come up with some sort of explanation, or a big box of tissues, when my little girl comes home from school tomorrow knowing she was excluded again, and quite possibly needing A Good Cry of her own.

At least the shower's clean should she need it.

Jx

© 16 February 2014