My youngest is 13 today.
I now have two teenagers living in my house.
God help me.
My youngest is 13 today.
I now have two teenagers living in my house.
God help me.
Son: Can I open my Junior Mints now?
Me: Wait until we get home, I don’t want open candy in the car. You know what happens if it gets lost in the car until summer.
Son: It melts into the carpet.
Me: And you know what happens then.
Son: …
Me: Then I have to kill you.
Son: Not today though.
Me: No, it would be months from now. I’d find melted chocolate in my car and say, “I’m going to kill that kid!”
Son: I’d put up a fight.
Me: Yeah, but I’m old and sneaky.
Son: Don’t you mean old and creaky?
Me: Smartass.
Son: I’m young and sneaky.
Me: You’re young and smartass.
By this point he was laughing too much to offer any further repartee.
Yesterday he harassed me for almost an hour because he was bored, his brother was too tired to play with him, and I wouldn’t let him play on the PS2 because I was doing something that required concentration.
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“I already answered you.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“You’re not capable of being quiet.”
“Yes I am.”
(After forty-five minutes of this): “Kid, at this point I’m not going to let you play on the PS2 no matter what you say, because it would just teach you that if you harass me for forty-five minutes you’ll get what you want. I’m not setting myself up for that.”
“But there’s nothing else to do!”
“There’s plenty to do. You just don’t want to do it because you’ve made up your mind to play with the PS2. But that’s not going to happen.”
Much sulkage ensued.
Today, when he got home from school, he spent that same forty-five minutes happily doing math problems on paper. He wanted to work out what terminal velocity is in kilometers per second.
Nothing else to do, my ass.