BOYS! Oh, The Things They Do!

When I found out I was pregnant with my son I didn’t give the question of what sex my baby would be much thought. This lasted for about five minutes until every rotten teenage girl thing I put my parents through played back in my head like a horror movie. I was only 19, so these days were not that far behind me. I definitely would be afraid to have a girl for fear she would be like me.

Intuitively I believed I was having a boy, but felt so sure that I began to doubt myself. My doubts were relieved when I had a strange dream while seven months along. I received a phone call in the middle of the night, picked up and said hello more than once before hearing a youthful male voice on the other end say hello back. I asked, “who is this?” He replied, “this is your son.” “What?” “This is your son.” I hung up the phone. Crazy as it sounds, I can still hear that voice, and I know it was him. I can still envision that dream as if I was overseeing it from above.

On January 20th, 1988 at 3:02am, after a long labor and cesarean delivery, a nurse held a blue blanket across the room and told me my baby was a boy. I didn’t see him up close until four hours later when another nurse barged into my room proclaiming, “Your baby’s hungry! Your baby’s hungry!” Mind you I had barely slept the last three days and had only got a 2 hour nap after delivering him. When she handed him to me, his blue eyes were wide awake and his tiny mouth was opening and closing like a baby bird waiting for a worm. I don’t know any mother who didn’t love their baby while pregnant, but once you see them and hold them, you immediately fall head over heels in love. Despite being born in the middle of the night AND during a horrendous blizzard, my head and heart recall only the joy of meeting my baby boy for the first time.

Benjamin grew into a curious toddler. He loved playing with his trucks and anything else that was representative of boys. He was so cute! Everybody loved his smile and flirty personality. This cuteness may or may not have got him out of trouble down the road. The first time I recall it working was when he was three years old. I was sitting on our living room floor reading the Sunday newspaper while Ben played with his Hotwheels cars next to me. He rammed one of them into my leg and I asked him to stop. He did this more than once and each time I asked him to stop. When he did it a third and fourth time, I raised my voice and told him to stop. He looked at me, smiled and said, “rhymes with truck” - you! “What!?” My immediate reaction was to laugh and had to hide my face behind the newspaper. My laughing prompted him to ram my leg again and repeat the bad word. I composed myself and took the cars away. Cute, Benjamin, cute!

When Benjamin was four years old, I was cleaning up the kitchen and decided to wipe off the wall leading into the kitchen from the living room. Four-year-old sticky fingers leave marks everywhere. There was an open wall space about eighteen inches wide between the end of my couch and where the kitchen counter started. I discovered a line of greenish colored blobs that didn’t come off easily. I got a closer look and realized these were at the height of Benjamin’s hand. They were boogers. I called him over, shared my discovery with him and reminded him to get a tissue if he had boogers to get rid of and not to wipe them on the wall. Cute, Benjamin, cute!

The cuteness continues as Benjamin becomes more of a boy year by year. I suppose some girls might do these things too, but I only had a boy and blamed it all on just that. He was a boy.
During the week when I would get into the car to leave for work, Benjamin would be trailing right behind me - well, most of the time. More than once, I would start the car thinking he was following me and have to wait a minute or two. I would go back in to the house to find him in the bathroom going number two. Couldn’t you have done that earlier? No, mommy, I had to go now! Not cute, Benjamin, not cute! Now we are late.

Ben was seven when I got married (divorced since 02’). We held the reception at an outdoor facility. Ben climbed a tree and fell several feet down the inside cutting and bruising himself all over his arms and legs. This blog would be twice as long as normal if I included all the amusing Ben stories. Here is a brief summary of the more memorable “boy” things Ben did;

• Belching in public - and not polite quiet noises. I gave up telling him to stop. He was proud of how loud he could belch.
• Bottle rocket wars - exactly what it sounds like. Ben takes one to the forehead and asks his buddy to take a picture to show how tough he is. He stands tall like Rambo with blood dripping down his face.
• BB in tongue at 12 - crazy antics of BB gun wars with his friends. Yes, they shot at each other. Another proud moment from Ben. Cute, Ben, cute!
• BB’s in my kitchen cabinets - BB gun wars in my house! I matched divots in my cabinets to BB’s. No denying this one! NOT cute Ben! Not cute!
• Learns to drive on the highway in a friends vehicle without my knowledge before he had his learners permit. I wasn’t thrilled, but I also wasn’t thrilled to have to teach him. Good work, Ben!

Life with Ben was never boring. He kept me on my toes. Enjoy the “boy” in your boys. The hands of time do not move backward.

“There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.” - Mark Twain