Braving Boys

Eight-year-old Joey said to me today, “I’d go back to all the bad times in my life to get back to some of the good ones.” Pretty profound for a young guy — and exactly how many bad times can the boy have encountered? I didn’t ask, just focused on the good instead.

“Which good times?” I asked.

“Just me and Daddy at Lake Wauburg, all by ourselves,” he said.

Knowing it must be a dad’s dream to hear something like this, I told John. Sure enough, his heart was warmed. And he can’t wait to get Joey back out on the lake, with the favorite cast net and a few fishing poles on a simple little Jon boat.

How about you — would you go back through the bad to get to the good?

“It’s a boy bag,” Danny declared the other day about the black leather, well, let’s call it a purse, sitting next to him in the back seat of the car. In it were a few toys he’d grabbed from the playroom before we headed out to watch cousin Jordan play soccer, and he’d stocked it with some money, too — he and Joey can’t hang out at the fields without buying something from the concession stand.

“Oh, a boy bag,” I responded.

“Yea,” Danny said. “Daddy told me that’s what is is.”

I totally understood.

“Well, then, that’s what it is,” I told him.

He was happy.

Until Joey scooted his booty into the vehicle and said, “Danny, why do you have a purse?”

Ouch.

The boy bag hasn’t been seen since.

“Mom, have you ever noticed that some girls push their boobies way up high?” Joey asked out of the blue the other day. “Yes, I’ve noticed,” I told him, realizing ‘boobies’ might be a tad too juvenile for an 8-year-old boy. So I asked him, “Do you know what the actual word for ‘boobies’ is?”

“Pupils?” he responded in a question kind of statement. “You’re thinking of nipples,” I told him, then explained the difference. “They’re called breasts,” I said, “like I had breast cancer.”

“Oh, yea!” said Joey, who went on to inquire (already forgetting the proper word): “Why do some girls like their boobies so big?” I explained that some people just like them big, and some don’t. He asked for my preference, and I revealed that I don’t happen to like them big. In fact, I had mine reduced, I shared, because they were too big, and they bothered me.

End of boobie story. We moved on to Mustangs and how GTs are better than 6-cylinders.

Boobie talk resumed tonight, when Joey said to John, “Dad, did you know mom had her boobies defrosted?” This from the boy who thought not long ago that his testicles were tentacles and still can’t quite figure out how babies get in the stomach. Maybe ‘boobies’ is not so juvenile after all. He is only 8. Plenty of time to clue him in. There is plenty of time, right?

Joey was telling John a confusing story. John said, “What are you talking about?” Joey said, “I don’t know, I stopped listening to myself after the first word.”

“My legpit hurts,” Danny declared in the car the other day. “Your legpit?” I asked. “What’s that?” He pointed to the area right behind his knee, right where the leg bends. Sure enough, that must be the legpit, because, well, it’s so much like, you know — the armpit.