Category: Boys

The Evil Gull Has Landed

The family at a stop on the fjord cruise

In the summer of 2009, my in-laws took the entire family on an amazing week-long trek to Norway. It was the boys’ first time abroad. They were then just six and eight. They were treated to business class seats on the flight from Newark to Oslo. We spent a couple days in Oslo at the Holmenkollen Park Hotel, our headquarters for exploring the city, viewing viking ships, and visiting the Vigeland Sculpture Park. We left Oslo and traveled via rail to Bergen where we spent two days enjoying the city, Bryggen, and the aquarium. We left Bergen on a fjord cruise. One of our stops on the cruise was Finnbotn farm where we were able to drink from a glacier-fed waterfall, eat traditional Norwegian food, and enjoy the odd sight of their pet parrot flying around the fjord. We later took a ride on the Flam railway, saw Kjosfosson Falls, and finally returned back to Oslo to enjoy the view from the roof of the opera house, which rises from a fjord. My point is that the entire trip was memorable. Each day was a grand adventure filled with incredible sights. For my boys, though, the highlight of the trip, the thing that still sticks with them, was a seagull.

On our first night in Bergen, as we were getting ready to put the boys to bed (a feat that is not easy when it’s 10:30 p.m. and still light outside), we heard a noise on our third-story window ledge. We went to the window and there, just inches away from us through an open window, was a large seagull that seemed not the least bit alarmed to find us staring at him. I told the kids to ignore him and get ready for bed, and we closed the window. Next thing we knew, the dang bird was pecking at the window. Seriously? Like it’s not difficult enough to get the kids to sleep? Now they know there is a large bird trying to peck his way into our room? Come on. Work with me, Norway.

The kids were by then completely riled up. They kept going to the window, trying to scare the seagull. It seemed, however, that the more they pestered him, the longer he felt compelled to stay. To get the kids away from the window, I decided it was time for a scare tactic. (I’m not proud of it, but sometimes they work when nothing else does.) I told them that the seagull, enraged by their taunting, was trying to get into our room so he could peck out their eyeballs. Okay. Okay. Not technically true, but effective nonetheless. They snuggled up to each other in their shared full-size bed and stayed well away from the window for the rest of the night.

The evil seagull hell bent on revenge

However, for the rest of the trip, they were convinced that every seagull we saw (and you can imagine how many frigging seagulls are in Norway) was the one from that window ledge. I have to admit that I might have encouraged the story a bit by pointing them out and telling them he was tracking them. When I did my 50-mile MS Walk in San Diego later that same year, I sent them this iPhone photo of a gull and told them he had found me so it was just a matter of time until he found them. I’m going to hell.

Well, today we were on our way home after school and Joe noticed a seagull in the park in our neighborhood. Of course, Joe not being one to let things go, the entire conversation began again. While Joe pondered their safety, Luke tried to persuade him that perhaps that gull he saw was just one of the original seagull’s henchmen (or is it henchbirds?) and that the true gull had not yet drawn a bead on their actual whereabouts or their eyeballs.

I have to admit that the entire legend completely cracks me up. How my kids, who started reasoning away the logical existence of Santa Claus at age six, can honestly believe one lone seagull is tracking them around the world is beyond me. Still, at the very least this tells me that a) they do actually listen to me and b) seagulls are a lot scarier than I thought. 😉

Posted on by Me 1

Can I Get an H, Pat?

All consonants are important, even if they're voiceless.

Joe is in the 4th grade and has graduated from those cheesy book reports that are mostly art projects designed to drive parents insane (you know…dioramas, mobiles, puppets….seriously, teachers?) to true, written reports this year. Joe is a solid C student in language arts. He reads quite well, but his writing and spelling are, well…let’s go with interesting. Still, he’s been doggedly determined to learn to write on his own so we’ve set him loose to see what he can come up with for his book reports. For the most part, we’ve been pleasantly surprised with his reading comprehension and his ability to retell the story for his reports.

Today I got quite a shock, however, when I proofread his written report for his latest book, Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. We’ve been on a Dahl kick at our house. Joe’s read James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The BFG. So far he has refused to read Matilda because (and I quote) “It’s about a girl.” At any rate, as I was reading the text of Joe’s report this time, I became a bit concerned.

“Joe….what do you mean by ‘He ran away to poach peasants’?”

“He went off into the woods and poached peasants,” he responded, as if I was crazy for not understanding.

“What do you mean by poach?”

“He gets peasants and eats them.”

“He eats peasants?”

“Yeah. He eats them.”

“Peasants?”

“Yes. Peasants.”

“Like he cooks them up and eats them?”

“Yes,” Joe replied, obviously becoming exasperated with my idiocy.

Was my son honestly telling me that this library book that I had selected for him was a book about people ingesting other people? I know Dahl’s stories are highly imaginative. In James and The Giant Peach, James’s parents are trampled to death by rhinoceroses in pastoral England. Then, James takes a trip from England to New York in a giant peach filled with a cast of bug characters who are all the size of an adult human. Dahl’s stories make me wish I had known the right drugs to do while I was in college. But, I still could not imagine a children’s novel in which Dahl creates cannibals who hunt and eat peasants. That seemed like a bit much, even for him. Joe and I went round and round until I finally grabbed the library book and began scanning it for evidence of cannibalism. Then, I found the word that might clarify the entire book report.

“Joe…were Danny and his dad poaching and eating birds?”

“Yes. Peasants are birds.”

“No, Joe. Pheasants are birds. Peasants are people”

“I know that,” Joe replied. “I knew they were eating birds. There were pictures of the birds. I just forgot that there was a difference between peasants and pheasants.”

“Big difference, Joe. At least your report makes more sense now. I was a bit uneasy picturing Danny and his dad feeding peasants sleeping pills stuffed in raisins and then watching them falling out of the trees.”

Joe had a good laugh about my mental image of poor, country folk dropping from the sky only to be then being picked up and subsequently cooked by gypsies. But this little miscommunication proves how delicate and complicated the English language is. One missing “h” and suddenly a simple hunting expedition takes a sinister turn. It’s miraculous that any of us learn to understand and communicate with the English language. There are myriad rules and then just as many exceptions to those rules. Take the suffix “ed,” for example, which can sound like “ed” (tainted), “d” (cleaned), or “t” (walked). For a native speaker, these distinctions are somewhat natural because we’ve heard them repeatedly. But, to a non-native speaker learning English, there is nothing but obfuscation. And, don’t even get me started on our punctuation rules, which can turn “Let’s eat, Grandpa” from a nice invitation for your grandfather to join you for dinner into “Let’s eat Grandpa” and somehow we’re back to cannibalism.

At the very least, today’s book report exercise reminded me to cut my kids some slack as they muddle their way through phonics and language arts in grade school. I have a master’s degree in writing and I still regularly have to research correct language and usage rules. I tell you, though, I am going to start being a bit more careful around Joe. If he could mistake pheasants for peasants, who knows what kind of breakfast he might cook up for me on Mother’s Day?

Posted on by Me 6

Lego Jus

A Lego representation of our family

My son Luke is our resident Lego fanatic. I would not like to hazard a guess about how many Legos he has. But if someone threatened to cut off my arm unless I estimated his Lego-worth, I’d conjecture that he has at least 5000 actual Lego pieces. It’s ridiculous. It’s the only toy he has asked for each and every birthday and Christmas since he turned 6. I would be disgusted by the whole situation if he wasn’t such a creative kid and a gifted builder. I’m quite accustomed to seeing Luke’s amazing creations that are the result of his merging pieces from several different sets.

Joe does not have Luke’s gift for Legos. He has built sets, mostly with Luke’s help, but he’s not the Lego visionary that Luke is. He wants to be, but he’s not there yet. Or so I thought. Yesterday, however, I was sitting at the counter working on my computer when Joe brought up a Lego creation. It was a representation of our family, each of us in our own likeness, as if we were gathered together in our dining area. Lego Joe was sitting at the table wearing his favorite green fleece jacket. Lego Steve was standing there looking dashing, a perfect representation minus the salt and pepper needed for his plastic hair. Lego Luke was petting Lego Ruby, who was the spitting image of her doggie self down to her reddish-brown and white border collie markings and her red collar. Then, there was Lego Justine. I had the long, blonde hair, the grey yoga pants, and the lipsticked lips. Looked like me all right. Then I noticed that Joe had me with my back turned to my family as I typed away on my computer. Ouch.

As utterly impressed as I was with Joe’s creation, his first ever fabricated solely using his own imagination, it was a bit sobering. Yep. That’s how you’ll find me far too often, sitting at the kitchen counter with my face turned to my MacBook and my back turned toward whatever else is going on in my house. Sad, but true. I suppose this is partly what I signed on for when I decided to focus on writing more. I imagine there are worse ways my son could have depicted me. I could have been napping on the couch or standing over him threateningly with a rolling pin in my hand. Those might not have been accurate representations but they certainly would have given me greater reason to pause. I’m simply going to let go of the notion that Lego me is glued to the computer like living me. I’m going to chose, instead, to focus on the fact that our Lego family is just like our real family, happily hanging out together in the heart of our home. I’m sure that’s what Joe was going for. 😉

Posted on by Me 2

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys will be boys

Here are 5 reasons why I am immeasurably glad I gave birth to boys instead of girls:

1) Their ability to pee standing up. This little convenience has saved us so many times on long car trips where there are no bathrooms for miles. I will even admit that there have been occasions when we have handed our sons empty water bottles in the car while we’ve been stuck in never-ending traffic on I-70 and let them have at it. Okay. It’s a bit gauche. But, you know what, I bet their little pee hoses have saved us unnecessary trauma at filthy rest areas all over this country.

2) Colorful and interesting word choices. Every single day I get to hear phrases including words like hot lava, explosion, death ray, imperial cruiser, and Uranus. In fact, my 8 year old just told his brother, “I’ve got my stun gun.” So precious. And way more fun than conversations about American Girl dolls. (Unless you recount the conversations when my boys combine hot lava, explosions, death rays, imperial cruisers, and Uranus in a story involving American Girl dolls.)

3) Whoopee cushions. ‘Nuff said.

4) Mud is better than glitter. Mud can be cleaned up. Glitter is sparkly herpes. Once you acquire it, you can never truly be rid of it.

5) Darth Vader is better than Barbie. Barbie has a Malibu townhouse, a pink convertible, and Ken. Darth Vader has galactic power, a Death Star, and the ability to force choke people without even touching them. Darth Vader – 1, Barbie – 0.

 

Posted on by Me 2