Breeder’s Corner – Page 4

Children Are Gross

May 122011

The toilet in the hall bathroom has a gizmo to prevent it from running endlessly if the flapper is leaky. It involves a little ratchet that prevents the floater from going down, attached to a plastic chain that hooks to the flush lever. The idea is, even if the water level goes down, the floater will stay up unless the flush lever is pushed.

Yesterday the little plastic chain broke. Hence, the floater wouldn’t go down, the tank wouldn’t refill, and the toilet couldn’t be flushed.

Now, we have two bathrooms in our house. Two. We’re privileged that way.

So you would think that, on seeing that the toilet wasn’t flushing, my children—my teenaged, supposedly intelligent children—would go use the other bathroom.

Or maybe you wouldn’t think that, because you know some children and are familiar with their disgusting ways.

That’s right, my two boys continued to use the non-flushing toilet all night, filling it with piss and toilet paper and who-knows-what that wasn’t visible in the nastiness.

Today I repaired the chain. It was easy, I used a paperclip and had it working again in two minutes. Then, not realizing that the toilet paper floating in the bowl was hiding an entire night’s worth of output, I flushed the thing to see if my fix had worked.

Yeah. You can probably picture the fun I’ve had cleaning that up.

Sibling Dynamics

Breeder's Corner, General Comments Off

May 112011

“I haven’t seen your brother yet today,” I mentioned to the Director. “I wonder if he’s even awake.”

“Do you want me to go get him up?” offered the Director.

“No, that’s not really your job.”

From the other room, Alpha Geek added “No, it’s his pleasure.”

Look Out, World

Breeder's Corner, General Comments Off

Mar 092011

…The Director turned sixteen yesterday.

As always, he wanted to have his party at his favorite pizza restaurant. When he was little, parties tended to consist of parents, grandparents, and sometimes a friend near his own age.

This year, he had three of his friends from high school at the party. The adults (and older brother) sat off to the side and talked among themselves, while the birthday boy and his crew discussed video games and gadgets. They demolished most of the birthday cake, and gathered around to be impressed at the gigantic modular toy gun one of his friends had gotten him. It shoots foam darts and lights up, and is actually three different guns that can be snapped together to form a single gun.

They were all dying to see it in action. “Can we take it outside and try it out?” asked one of his friends.

At first, a decade of Mommy habit rose up and I started to demur—playing outside, next to a parking lot? Unsupervised?

Then common sense stepped in, and I told my son, “If you can’t handle a parking lot at sixteen, there’s no hope for you. Go have fun.”

So they did. They swarmed in and out a few times, reading the directions on the box and collaborating on how to make the gadget work. It was a complete guy-fest. They had a ball.

Two of his friends were dropped off by their parents. The third drove himself there. My son has peers who can drive. If he would get off his ass and sign up for driver’s ed, he would be driving.

Be afraid.

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