Am I outnumbered?
You bet I am.
Even as I sit here, trying to write a chapter, sew up a slew of holes in a slew of jeans and put the finishing touches to this blog, my son Will is in the downstairs bath, announcing to his friend Carter, “I can see your butt! And it’s disgusting!”
Not my kind of bathroom chat, if there is such a thing.
My girls and their friends (at least at ages 9 and 12) tend to use the bathroom one at a time and without commentary.
Yet I have a husband, five sons and two male dogs – all of whom evidence what I consider unseemly glee in every kind of bodily appurtenance and function, especially emissions therefrom.
When my husband came home not long ago with a particularly grim-looking “natural chewie” for our Saint Bernard pup, he made a circuit of our house asking everyone, “What do you think this is?”
No one could guess.
So filled with glee was he that my husband even took a picture with his camera and sent it to our son at college.
“It’s a bison penis!” he finally announced triumphantly.
Even the dog seemed unnerved.
And yet, more times than I can count during a week, I say things like, “Chewing a stick does not replace brushing your teeth!” or “No, you can’t threaten to pee on anyone!” In fact, there are few other contexts in which I can imagine saying things like that at all.
But that is the reality of living with sons.
They don’t have to pretend that they like things that would make you or me cringe; they really do like things that would make you or me cringe. They really love anything that sounds like flatulence. They really love anything that refers to their nether regions. They don’t even mind examining and comparing dog poop sizes and contents. It’s what makes their wheels turn.
They love their new things. Then they set out on a concerted and devoted effort to bust them, crack them, disembowel or otherwise make them stop doing what they were built to do. They jump on cardboard blocks. They bite high-bouncing balls. My boys seem genuinely dismayed and even distraught when what they set out to destroy actually ends up… well, destroyed.
There are great things about having sons. Some of the things they do that are nuts are actually also funny. Once, when he was little, my son Dan kept resolutely dipping the petals of a daisy in milk before eating them.
Finally, I asked him, “WHY are you doing that?”
And he answered patiently, “Otherwise, I can’t stand the taste of the petals.”
There’s always the chance, of course, that they could outgrow the need to stomp, point, growl, gurgle and burp.
My husband’s only 42.
If you want to know more (and can handle more toilet jokes) read my piece from a recent Wondertime magazine on http://wondertime.go.com/parent-to-parent/article/where-the-boys-are.html
I write a column in Wondertime called The Long View, (I didn't name it) which delicately hints at the truth that it seems I've been a mother since I was born.