The Game of LIFE

Board games are a pretty big draw in our house, and the game of LIFE has been the frontrunner lately as the game of choice by my nine-year-old. Interestingly, I seem to be learning more about what I’m teaching my son than I think he learns about growing up when we play the game. 

For example, he is brutally disappointed if he makes it through the game of LIFE without landing on the space that allows him to ‘collect’ at least one set of twins. He loves to land on the ‘have a baby’ spaces, much more so than the ‘sue another player’ or ‘spin to win’ spaces. This, I think, means I’ve done well. His most important goal is family. Since he is an only child, I feel a bit stricken by the fact that he craves twins in the game because I know he craves a sibling that I will not be giving him. But it still makes me smile when he wants to get twins so badly. 

Last week, when I landed on the orange ‘get married’ space, he asked me if I wanted a blue or a pink person. I said I guess I’ll take a blue person, and he said he just asked because he wasn’t sure if I wanted to be gay. This, I think, means I’ve done well again. My son seems to consider being gay as a natural possibility, and perhaps, in this other LIFE, I would like to be gay. Fair enough, and I feel good about it. I said I would stick to being straight because I love his dad and would like to stay married to him. He agreed that would be a good idea.

Last night when we played, I asked him if he wanted a blue or a pick person when he landed on the ‘get married’ space. He was embarrassed, and just rolled his eyes. I asked him to explain. ‘You know I like girls’, he told me. ‘But it’s okay for boys to like boys, I don’t have a problem with that,’ he added quickly. Awesome. I was going to pat myself on the back for a job well done, but I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. 

‘I’ll put your baby on the right side of the back seat so you can see him,’ he said and rolled his eyes at me once again. I like my son to sit on the right side of the back seat so I can catch a quick glimpse of him at a red light or a stop sign just to double check that he is belted in or sitting up in the seat properly or not picking his nose. He likes to give me a hard time about that, but he puts his first kid on the right side of the back seat as well. Give me a hard time, but follow my lead anyway. I can live with that.  

Last night he also picked the mobile home as his starter home. Okay. (The mobile home is the only starter that doesn’t accrue equity, but it is also the least expensive.) Have I taught him to go cheap and not worry about investing in the future? Or is he just a kid who doesn’t want to hand off all that fake cash sitting in front of him?  He has been skipping college in the last several games as well,  although he’s been telling me since he was seven that he wants to go to USC. Does this mean that in his reality, he has an long game, but in his fantasy LIFE, he just wants to get his hands on the cash, and fast? Is he a risk taker and he has decided that it only takes either 15 minutes of fame or the right spin on the game board to make it big?  Or is it that he just wants to win the darn game?  So, have I taught him to live in the moment (good) or not plan for the future (not as good)? I waiver in my opinion on that lesson depending on the state of our bank account on any given day. As for taking risks, well, at this point in his life, I believe it’s a great thing. We encourage him to try new things, get out there and play, try that trick at Skatelab (as long as you are well-padded), don’t be the kid on the side of the pool, jump in! Of course, that is always followed by my caveat of, ‘but calculate your risks before you take them, find your out first, you are not going near the ocean without me unless you are certified as a jr. lifeguard, etc....Thankfully, at least for now, he isn’t copying my ‘crazy’, but I suspect that those twins in the back seat will be jr. lifeguards by the time they are ten.

Saratoga Arts Center

It's time again for the Saratoga Arts Center summer show. I'm proud to be included! Go see the show all month at the Arts Center!

I have some really cool friends who do some really cool things! Here is my first post under the new heading #coolthingsmyfriendsaredoing    This is made by Lara. It's available at the Egg and Dart Gallery in Newport, RI or online at egganddart.bigcartel.com It's a little ceramic salt and pepper holder complete with spoon and wooden tray. It's adorable! A great gift!

Responding colors?

“I’d like to add green accessories to my blue room because those two colors respond well to each other.” Okay, then. Wow. I’m a little bit blown away by this statement coming from my eight-year-old. I go immediately to my old friend Google to see if this is decorator’s lingo or something he may have heard on some television show. Google informs me that colors ‘work well together’, ‘coordinate with each other’, ‘go really well together’, but respond to each other? Not so much. And there are no references to television shows quoting the response of one color to another.  I think it is quite a beautiful statement. Of course, I am making too much out of an off the cuff remark, but I think I’m the writer here, and my kid just said something I’d like to steal as my own. I think, perhaps, I should be thanking his wonderful teachers for encouraging his creative little mind. He wrote a story about a monkey in class not long ago, and he mentioned how the monkey slept ‘above the below’. Again, can I steal from my kid? Isn’t that a lovely way to explain that the monkey slept in the trees? Or is my love for my amazingly brilliant son clouding my judgement? Oops, hold on, my amazingly brilliant son is licking the popsicle box again. Creative genius or bonehead? Thoughts? Anyone?

The Magic Bag

“Mom, did you bring my ipod?” This question is coming at me from the back seat of the car quite a bit lately, and I have only myself to blame. For the past 8 years, my son has not had to look any further than my ‘magic bag’ for anything and everything he needs once we leave the house. Well, within reason. He knows he won’t find his basketball in my bag, although we do keep one in the car these days, just in case. He knows he won’t find an ice cream cone in there, but he knows he will find the cash to buy an ice cream cone, the napkins to hold around the cone and the hand wipes to clean up his sticky hands after indulging in the ice cream cone. In fact, my bag is so well stocked, that when my son was a toddler and we joined other kids for play dates, his little friends would stare longingly at my bag upon our arrival, wondering wide-eyed about what treats I might have for them that day. Apparently, I carried the best snacks. The freeze-dried fruit was very popular, and I also indulged in the name brand Gerber puffs instead of basic cheerios. I arrived with juice pouches instead of sippy cups, and mini corn muffins with blueberries baked in them. Or maybe it was just that I always had some kind of new surprise in the form of a snack, and it is common knowledge that toddlers are all about  the snacks. 

It’s my own fault that I have seen fit to carry everything from some kind of hand-held entertainment device to a change of underpants for my son all this time. But once he graduated to the ipod, I decided he needed to take responsibility for himself. Oh, I still provide the basics from hand wipes to benadryl to band-aids to a small flash light to search for things under the seat of the car to scotch tape for an emergency repair of homework sheets to extra baggies so I can divide up snacks into separate servings for each friend so no one bogarts the treats. And then there are those special days when I have a role of duct tape, always a handy item to carry with you, an extra mouth guard, or those sour candies for times when a snack isn’t quite right but you’ve gotta have something. Yes, it’s as if my bag is straight out of a Harry Potter or a Percy Jackson book. It looks relatively small compared to what I pull out of the darn thing. No tents, swords, compact kitchens or magical beans, but it’s still pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.  But I should draw the line at the ipod. If my son wants it, or more importantly, if he is allowed to take it on whatever field trip we are on, then he should remember to bring it himself, right? Or am I being a mean mommy now that he’s so used to me having everything he needs in one compact location? Boy, I like being the one with the answers and the ipod. I think maybe I’ll sneak that thing into my magic bag for a few more years and really ruin him for his future wife, that’s okay these days, right?

Do girls fart?

“Do girls fart?”  Whew.  Finally, a question from my 8-year-old that  I can answer without hesitation, without wringing my hands and stumbling over my words. A question with a one word answer that will not keep me up all night wondering if I answered it correctly, confidently and with a comforting tone of voice.  A question that cannot be answered in hundreds of different ways. A question that will not send me to the internet to read 565 different versions of what the the correct answer should be.  Like the questions he asked when he was 5.

As a 5-years-old, he wanted to know about God and death. He wanted to know if there were toys in heaven, and if he could bring his own toys to supplement the heavenly toy supply. He wanted an accurate description of the place, the housing situation and the local weather patterns. He wanted to know if it was on another planet and how he would get there, and if he had to hold my hand while we crossed heavenly streets. He wanted to know if our dog could go to heaven too, but first he wanted to make sure she would live to be one hundred, and if not, why not, and what will we do, and how will we go on?  

At 8, he wants to know about farts. Girl farts. He must have heard at least one girl fart in the past 8 years. It doesn’t seem that there is much in the way of modesty among kids his age yet, although I see it slowly coming on now. But truly, some girl must have farted in front of him. Damn, I must have farted in front of him at some point. Maybe I don’t qualify as a girl. Whatever. He wants to know if girls perform the same bodily functions as boys. 

“Of course,” I tell him. “Girls poop and pee and fart.” 

“Ewwww,” he says. Okay. Does this mean he is starting to see girls a little bit ‘differently’ than his male friends? I mean, why is it ewwwwwy that girls fart, but he and his friends can wreak havoc on any small space, kill small insects with their stink and even drive the dog out of the room all while falling apart with laughter at the sounds emanating from between their butt cheeks. 

“Well, what would you like girls to do with their gas?” I ask. “It’s a totally natural function.”  

“So why do you tell Dad he can’t just let them rip?” He wonders with a phrase that I know probably came from his dad.  

“It’s just not polite or even nice to do in certain situations.”  

“But it’s natural,” my son says with a whole lot of sarcasm. 

“Don’t be a stinker, I say.  “Get it!” He doesn’t laugh but rolls his eyes at me instead. “It is natural,” I say, “but it is also not very romantic or appealing to be sitting next to someone who is shooting off farts.” 

He laughs at that, in fact, he laughs a pretty hearty laugh at the idea of farts shooting out of someone’s butt, and he tells me that the next comic book he writes-he writes comic books with his own superheroes-will be a guy who shoots people with farts. Great. Those drawings will be really great ones for Grandma’s refrigerator. 

At least,  I answered his question honestly and with the same answer that he will get from anyone he asks. That was easy. What a relief. Now we can discuss all of Fartboy’s super powers, right? Question number two. It’s 7.15 a.m. Did I mention the time? And we are out the door on the way to school.   Question number two, “Mom, what’s puberty?” 

Trying out being nice?!

My sister and my nieces are here visiting, and my son is excited that they are here, but I think he is most excited that he gets to take a day off and go to Universal Studios instead of to school. He is also excited to get to prank them.  It’s true, all these girls have invaded his space and are sleeping in his bed and living in his room and leaving bras on his bedroom floor, something that thoroughly disgusts him. It’s not that he is usually mean to my nieces, he loves them, he enjoys spending time with them, but he also likes to tease them any way he can. He has already put his plastic bugs under all the pillows and tried to pour salt on their cereal. He has hidden their shoes and taken blackmail pictures of them sleeping. So, when he spends the morning asking my oldest niece about college and how she is doing and if she needs anything, she is justifiably suspicious. I hear her asking my son, “Why are you being so nice to me?” His reply, “I’m just trying it out.” She has a big laugh at that, so do I. But as the mother, I feel that however funny his comment is, I must follow up my laughter with a query as to why he needs to ‘try out being nice’.  His reply to that, “To see if I like it.”  “And?” I ask curiously.  “It’s okay,” he tells me.   Alright then, it’s okay to be nice, it feels okay. Should I be proud, confused, concerned or just indifferent? Should I let it go right here or turn this into a long discussion about behavior and morals and that fact that It matters. Shouldn’t everyone automatically feel great about being nice? Why does one need to try it on for size? I wonder if this is a kid thing? Do they all try being nice on for size before they commit? I have to let it go for now though, I realize, because we’ve got something to do today.  I tell him that we are taking him out for ice cream. He jumps up with a huge grin and punches the air with a loud whoop and a ‘yeah!’ Then, he calms down quickly and says, “Wait. Why?” “Why not?” I say. “Why are we going for ice cream? What’s the catch?” The catch is that we are also going shopping for a prom dress for my other niece. Ah ha. I’m caught.  I see the day before me suddenly, and I don’t see my son spending any more time on the trying out being nice thing, in fact,  I’ll be lucky to escape this day without a migraine. So much for being nice. I guess I need to up my bribes!