Pretty Fly for a White Guy

My son is starting to get pimples. I nearly cried when I saw this.

NO! Not my baby. He is the only one in the house who doesn’t roll their eyes at me behind my back. (Yes, Rick, I see you do it too.) He is the only person who loves to act just as goofy as I do and isn’t too cool to be seen with me. He can’t grow up. Who am I going to make fun of the ironies of the English language with? Who is going to randomly entertain me by singing popular songs with his own made up verses? Who is going to tell me inane facts that they heard on John Tesh or read on the Internet? Oh wait, I’ve got Rick for that last one.

Joe will turn 12 next week. He is in the 6^th grade and enjoys acting like a clown, has no problem dancing like a goof, and relishes screaming like a girl. He still sits on my lap and shares his popcorn with me. He loves playing with his dog and beating up on his sister (when she doesn’t kick his butt). And he isn’t ashamed to do his runway model walk and act “fierce.”

But I have a feeling the days are numbered until the teenager comes screeching out. He thinks Jessica Alba is pretty and his mouth drops open and he looks dumbfounded during the Victoria Secret commercials. He’s started to wear Axe when we go out to the movies on the weekends.

He has been my husky little man, kicking butt on the football field and chugging after the baseball at first base. But I’ve noticed he has started to grow taller. He is only an inch or two shorter than I am. This seems to have happened completely out of the blue. And suddenly he wants to get in shape. He’s been keeping up with his pushups and sit ups to stay in shape for basketball. In fact, he’s been doing an East Supreme basketball clinic twice a week to improve his ball handling. I watched Sunday night and he can really handle the basketball. In the three-on-three tournament he played a week ago, he actually dribbled the ball down the lane to the basket several times instead of passing it away. His shooting, however, well that is going to need some work.

(We signed Mandy up this session for the same basketball clinic, because it’s for boys and girls grades 6-8. She’s going to play recreational basketball this winter in addition to her club volleyball season. It’s somewhat humorous watching the 8^th grade boys fumble all over the place when they have to do drills next to her in line. But at least the basketball boys are closer to her height, although she says several of these boys already have mustaches. And then there are the high school boys who are there to help run the clinic. I’m not exactly sure Mandy will be getting as much benefit with her ball-handling skills as Joe does. But she sure comes home happy. Well, we tried.)

Anyways, I’m not ready for my little man to start changing into a real man. Soon the girls will start giving him the eye. He will actually start using his cell phone to text people, instead of just using it to play games at his sister’s sporting events. Why is it that he rarely texts, but yet he knows how to make just about any texting face with only the keys on the keyboard? It’s probably the same reason he can do more with any of the electronics in my house than I can – he’s an 11-year-old boy.

He is starting to grow up. And this is going to be a problem. I can tell already. He has Rick’s blue eyes and facial features. Now that some of that baby fat is melting away, Joe is going to look just like his dad. Evidently Rick couldn’t even go home over the lunch hour to escape the girls in high school. Yep, the girls are going to be calling and texting. And Joe has such a soft heart, you just know some aggressive girl is going to love him and leave him and break his heart.

I’m just not ready for all of this. It was easier with Mandy for some reason. Maybe it is because she looks and acts a few years older than she actually is. And we’ve been lucky. Most of the boys that pursue her that she is interested in are pretty nice guys. I’m sure it will get tricky once she goes to high school, especially at a big public high school in Lincoln. But I know she has a good head on her shoulders, and just because a guy likes her doesn’t mean she automatically likes him. That is a relief. And she knows the difference between the guys you date and the bad boys (although I think she does flirt with them, as well. It’s in her genes. I will put my foot down, however, if there are any boys with motorcycles. I know there are a good number of people who are laughing pretty hard about that comment right now.)

Maybe it has something to do with mothers and sons. Or, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Joe was such a terror when he was little, and now he is such a joy. He has a lot of personality and an awesome sense of humor. Joe gets up early and makes the coffee most mornings. Today he decided to make pancakes for everybody and was cooking them when we came downstairs. I asked him if he wanted an iPod for his birthday. He said no, he would just take another Playstation game. He doesn’t want us wasting money on something he doesn’t need. He is going to be a wonderful man some day. He already is a wonderful son.

He’s not officially a teenager yet, but I’m the one with the growing pains. It won’t be long until my little boy is too cool to hang out with his mom and he will prefer his friends to his family on the weekends. This next year I plan to cherish all the time I have left with the boy, before he outgrows us. Then it will be just Rick and me. Yep. That better not have been an eye roll . . .

P.S. Rick felt that I did not portray his annoyance with some of my comments in the most literate way. He states that he does not roll his eyes at me behind my back. He is quite adamant that he clearly rolls his eyes at me in front of my face. In fact he states that he rolls not only his eyes, but his whole head, and has no problem with me seeing his annoyance. In fact, he says, he relishes it. Clearly, he has never heard the mantra: Happy wife, happy life. He is a slow learner.