A Happy Belated Birthday To The Boy!

I'm just a little bit late on this, but I have to salute The Boy because it was his birthday on Friday; he turned 16. And since I on occasion will make fun of the kids on here, then I also feel compelled to at least one time per year recognize them for being the good kids they are.

For The Boy, though, recognizing him on-time was made more difficult by several factors. For one, my Real Job intruded a lot last week, and without the Real Job, there's no "Thinking The Lions" first because my office at my Real Job is where I do most of this and second because if I don't have the Real Job then Sweetie will make me do housework.

The Boy's actual birthday was last Friday, and I could have posted something honoring him that day, since I took the day off after my busy week, but I was too busy on Friday blow-drying our carpet and picking up Greek food, both of which are time-consuming but only one of which was The Boy's fault. I know what you're guessing, but, no, The Boy was responsible for the Greek food, since he wanted gyros for his birthday. He didn't want to go to the restaurant because going to a restaurant means taking the Babies! to the restaurant with us, and because saying "taking the Babies! to the restaurant with us" is synonymous with "taking two very loud perpetual motion machines to the restaurant with us" or, to be more accurate, it's synonymous with "taking two very loud perpetual motion machines that apparently were designed to rub Ramen noodles in their hair and then throw their milk cups at the computer to the restaurant with us." So I had to go pick up the gyros. (I took the Babies! anyway.)(Ramen noodle-hair and all.)

But I didn't leave until after I tried to blow dry our playroom floor. There are, it turns out, lots of hidden secrets to owning a house, and I will let you in on one of them: If you have a back door that is recessed into the ground so that if you go out it you have to climb up stairs, and if you never ever use that back door because it's in the playroom and you really don't go outside all that much anyway because "outside" is filled with hickory nut shells from the hickory trees in your yard and it's also filled with bugs, and if because you don't really use that back door you tend to ignore the leaves that accumulate in the stairwell until they are waist high, and if because of that you forget that there was a drain in that stairwell, a drain that is now covered by years of old decomposing leaves that are now waist high, and if you also live in a location that occasionally gets rain, if all of that is true, then here is my tip for you: you can't really blow dry a carpet with a hair-styling blow-dryer left at your house by Oldest when she moved out.

Here's another tip: Babies! will happily play on a soaking wet carpet, getting their socks and pants wet, for hours, so if you find yourself suddenly, inexplicably, changing diapers a lot on your day off, and also changing pants and socks and wondering just what the heck is going on with the Babies! and their peeing, maybe go check the playroom.

So that took most of the day Friday, and I couldn't post anything about how great The Boy is to make up for all the times I post things about how he's basically an optimist who uses phrases like "the Stalin of snacks." Plus, it was hard to think up good things to say after watching The Boy eat about15 pounds of lamb on his gyro. He ordered so much extra meat that you couldn't really call it a gyro anymore. It was more like a pita being overrun by lamb strips -- like if the pita was the Spartans in 300 and the lamb strips were the guys who weren't Spartans in 300.

Saturday, I was going to post something about what a great guy The Boy is and how he helps out and pitches in and really takes surprisingly good care of the Babies! when we have him babysit. I didn't get to it, though, because I had to go get plants for the yard, since I announced to Sweetie that it was time we started doing the yard right, and that meant going to a greenhouse to get actual plants that were designed to be in an actual yard, and by the time we got home from that I was exhausted because we took the Babies! with us there but left The Boy home since he was watching the NFL Draft and didn't want to move off of Frankencouch.

That left Sunday, when I had fully intended to post something nice about The Boy but I couldn't because The Boy had to use our home computer (which we call " 'Puter") to do his homework, homework he started at 11 a.m. and continued working on with only one break (at 12:10 to eat lunch, which was tortillas and mayonnaise and lunchmeat) until 4:30 p.m., nonstop, and I had to hang around and help him with that because he was working on a research paper; my role was to edit each draft and help him interpret my editing comments and also to calm him down when I suggest, in draft three, that he move paragraphs back to the spot he'd had them in draft one, only I'd suggested that he move them for draft two and then changed my mind because I thought they were better where they were in the first place. ("That's called editing," I explained, unhelpfully). By 4:30 when he was done 'Puting, I couldn't go on there and post anything nice about him because I was tired from editing, and also because I was really close to the end of The Golden Compass, which I'd been reading in between editing, and also because I had to start cooking spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

So now it's today, and I'm really late posting this entry to say nice stuff about The Boy, but you can see that I really had no choice but to delay things even though that means The Boy gets an after-birthday salute instead of an on-birthday salute.

And he did deserve an on-birthday salute, because The Boy really has a great many good qualities. He's funny, funny in a way that makes it seem very natural. He works hard at whatever he sets his mind to do -- he recently started working out to build up muscle for varsity football and puts a lot of effort into it, effort that requires a large amount of lamb meat but effort nonetheless.

And although he will probably hate that I mention it, The Boy is a softie. He wants to come across all gruff and tough, but he's not. He's nice to his sisters -- he recently took a break from watching sports just to talk on the phone to Oldest, who had called to talk to her mom or her sister but found neither of them available. When she asked to talk to The Boy, he went ahead and did it. He plays with the Babies! -- actually gets down and plays with them and talks to them and interacts with them and (we've seen it) kisses them. And he's moved by tears; The Boy is still affected by the time Sweetie was pregnant and overwhelmed by having 36-week-old Babies! inside her and broke down crying about laundry not being done.

You may have to dig a little to get past the layers of NCAA-Tournament-Watching and Playstation 3-Playing and Teenage-Boy-Hanging-Out-With-Friends-Looking-Guilty and all that other stuff that lies on The Boy's surface, but scratch past that and you find a great kid who's not only fun to hang out with but will make you proud to know him, and prouder to know him the longer you know him. So please, in your comments, with The Boy a happy belated birthday.

I'll pass them to him just as soon as I finish blow-drying the basement.

righteous indignationbybrianefp
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