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

Men oh Pause

All of us have heard the startling fact that men think about sex several times a day. Every 52 seconds, if you can believe this report.

We are all well aware that most women do not.

I agree. We’re too damned busy thinking about what to serve for dinner, or whether we paid that bill in time, or where the hell the other sock went.

By the way, according to the same research, a woman uses 20,000 words per day, while a man uses only 7,000.

I’m not surprised by that at all. Considering that the word for fellas is “Sex”, while the woman is busy coming up with excuses to get out of it.

If you ask me, if men had to do the whole menstruation and menopause thing, methinks the odds would be a little different (is it irony that those very words have 'men' in them yet it's the women that suffer?).

I do find it funny in a way, that a young girl looks forward to the whole puberty business with excitement and a certain kind of pride that she is “becoming a woman”. Give her a few months of visits from Aunty Flo and she’ll soon sing a different song.

So why, I wonder, do so many women get so upset when they’re closing in on the other end of things, worrying that their womanhood is somehow diminished? If we believe all the jokes and stereotypes, she’s spent the better part of 40 years cursing ‘the curse’ or trying to get out of her matrimonial duty, and should be happy that it’s almost over.

It’s not that the ladies don’t like the lovin’. Oh no, take a look at all the stories of ‘cougars’ currently on the prowl, looking for love in a younger form than perhaps the one they’ve been cuddling up to for better or for worse. Heaven knows Harlequin/Mills & Boon™ still publish enough of the sexy stuff (about 100 new titles every month at your local newsagent or favourite bookstore- I should know, my Beloved delivers them).

It’s just that women need to be in the right mood.

Whereas the typical man wakes up in it (hello morning glory).

And if you’re Mr & Mrs Average, time and place –not to mention privacy– is paramount for your paramour.

I swear I do not know how the previous generations had so many children. If it isn’t enough doing all the running around that a family requires on a daily (and nightly) basis, how on earth did the parents manage to find themselves alone in the bedroom with enough time and energy for intimacy?! Equally, I wonder how many have not been caught ‘in flagrante delicto’ and had to come up with a cover, or cover up, so that their children are not permanently damaged by the scene (do the words “Mummy and daddy are just having a little chat; we’ll be out soon” sound familiar)?

After a couple of kids, most couples I know have sadly resorted to what’s known as ‘hallway sex’: be it a quick kiss on the cheek or an outright “Screw you” as they cross paths, depending on the stress levels that week.

If they’re lucky, they’ll get lucky only a few times a month. And then sometimes it’s a case of just lie back and think of England, just to keep the other happy for a while.

It’s obviously been on my mind as I edge ever closer to that certain time of life, whether I’ll embrace the end of my monthly visitor, or feel saddened as the visits stop. I can only hope that Aunty Flo won’t take what’s left of my libido with her.

At least I can console my Beloved with the fact that in the time it’s taken for me to compose this post, I have had sex on the brain for a solid 37 minutes (give or take a couple of trips in to check on children).

So by my reckoning, I’ve matched his every-52-seconds no less than 42 times today.

That’s gotta count for something, right girls?!

Jx
©2010