Take my child, for example. We'll call him 'Clark Able', okie dokie?
He's sweet. He's sensitive - often times to a fault. He's quiet and holds back. He stands off at the edge of a crowd.
Sometimes.
He's also loud, rude, and opinionated. Sometimes.And at those times, I just do not know what to think. Because loud, rude, and opinionated looks quite different on a boy than on a girl. Quite often, being loud, rude, and opinionated involves only one thing to a male:
The digestive and excretory system.
I do not know why this system is such a constant source of fascination to the male species, but it is.
And no matter what the weird noise is, no matter how awful the smell, or how long a burp lasts, it is congratulated and laughed at and discussed at length.
It just never gets old.
I have tried to shield my children, my precious boys, from this obsession. But, alas, they have all fallen, one by one, prey to the clutches of their father.
This child in particular.
We went to a friend's home for lunch a few weeks back. (Jon had invited himself and his family, only he forgot to mention that little fact to me until I was actually in the people's home, now feeling like a total party crasher. But we're not discussing that now.)Moving on.
I was already feeling a little out of place due to that. You know, the thing I am not discussing right now...
Plus, we had never really had dinner with them before.
Plus, they think that our kids are absolutely great.
Plus, there was that thing that was making me uncomfortable. You know, that which I am not discussing.
Ahem.
We were just finishing up a beautiful lunch and I was beginning to relax a little when this child of mine pushed his plate back, leaned back in his chair, put his hand over his stomach, and announced, "Whooo-OOOO! I gotta' go to the bathroom if you all know what I mean."
Quickly I did what any mother would do, I shot him 'the eye'. This promptly shushed him, but only temporarily.
A few minutes later, he opened the bathroom door. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, standing posed in the bathroom doorway. I figured that if I ignored him, he would get on with his life.
Unfortunately, being a guest in someone's home, they tend to not ignore someone standing frozen in a bathroom doorway.
"Lordy, Lordy, Be! You do NOT want to know what just went on in here and you definitely do NOT want to smell what just happened in here!"
Yeah.Never.
Gets.
Old.
5 comments:
My kids do stuff like that too, even my girls. Plus their table manners are kind of lacking. Two things that I never notice unless we are in public or at someone else's house etc. So after I have been totally embarrassed and I'm questioning my fitness as a parent, I think back to how I learned my table manners. By getting yelled at all the time for every little thing I did, by my dad, making mealtime at my house pretty miserable. My dad even quizzed me on my times tables at dinner until I would burst in to tears! So we are much more laid back with our kids. There is probably some middle ground in there where you can teach your kids manners without tramatizing them. But if there isn't, I can live with the temporary embarrassment. (By the way, I've forgiven my dad and we're cool.)
Oh Melanie you never fail to make me laugh out loud!
Hows come we didn't receive this awesome display of manliness when you all were at our house for dinner the other night? I was holding back! Next time - bring it! Peace.
Sadly my 2 year old already laughs when he passes gas, where do they get it? (Oh I'm unlurking, this is the unknown Winkler girl, Andrea. Also known as Allison's sister or Tracy's daughter. I hopped over from Elaine's blog.)
puddlegirl, no way, aren't you married to the famous puddleboy.
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