Put on the damn helmet!

There's a comedian who does a routine about how the five threat levels do not make any sense to him, and he always gets confused calls from his mother, who does not understand what she is supposed to do when the terror threat level goes from yellow to orange. He tells her that no one does. He then proposes his own terror threat alert levels, and there are two: get a helmet, and put on the damn helmet. 

People, I am deep in the throes of hell joy of raising boys. I guess our threat level went officially from yellow to orange with the Duel of the Fates - a day that will live in St. Jude infamy. I may or may not have mentioned that Landen is going through his pestering phase. He knows more than you and he cannot wait until you finish a sentence, so excited is he to point out your idiocy. You're doing it all wrong, and he would love to oblige you and point out how. It is safe to assume that no one feels the red hot coals of this more than Jake, who has held on to his patience like a champ all summer. We've been telling Landen for six months that if he keeps being a pushy know-it-all or a jokester to his friends, some kid is going to lay him out. He did not heed the warning though.

Picture it: Thursday before last in the bus line at St. Jude. Tens of children waiting in line to catch bus 1717, mine included. Landen reaches over and yanks on the handle of Jake's backpack while he's wearing it. Jake declares "I have had enough of this shit!" by turning around and smacking Landen in the face. Landen returns with a punch in the face. Smacks were laid. Punches were thrown. Karate chops were hi-yahhed. It took three teachers to break up the fight, and my oldest came home with a busted lip. The principal said she's never seen a fight like that in her years at St. Jude.

Go big or go home, we teach here. I'm not going into the visit to the principal, the punishments, the crying, the sobbing on the phone with the psychologist they had seen the day before. We move on. Except the television that used to live in their room. It moved out and is being earned back with good behavior. 

I promise that I always go into weekends without Corey with a good attitude. I even let the boys sleep in the bed with me Friday night. They wanted to because we took the TV out of their room, but they said it was because they like sleeping in my bed with me. I like us all in the same room because if some events requires that I save their lives, it's easier if they are next to me, or just in the same room. 

It does not take long before my pleasing personality folds to the challenges of BOYS.

One of them made a Number Two in his bathroom in the dark. This made him completely oblivious to the giant mess he left on the toilet. I really cannot get any more specific than that. Mutiny of the Toilet. I made him clean it with Clorox spray and then rubbing alcohol. Fast forward two days, to my finding a bloodied undershirt AND a bloodied uniform shirt in the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper. Fast forward at warp speed past my flipping out about that.

I mean, I have a hard time believing that you violated a toilet to that degree and did not take note of it, even in the dark. By all measures of intellect, I would assume you have the ability to recognize that such a mess on THE FRONT OF YOUR CLOTHES would surely leave a scene in the restroom. But then to not mention the two? Because you FORGOT?! I responded by #1 asking him 372 questions about all his bathroom expeditions in recent memory, which is obviously faulty information #2 declaring that his father or I (mostly me) would be inspecting all of them in the coming days to make sure his colon is not trying to escape his body and #3 demanded $25 of him to pay for the replacement of the uniform shirt, which I would have been able to  save AT THE TIME but is bound for the garbage with two days of dried mutiny on it.

I have a family member who tells a hilarious story of driving lessons with her mother, who asked after a particularly intense lesson if she was a f**king R-word? Because she is a now well-rounded, sensible and grown individual, I come dangerously near tinkling in my pants when she tells the story, although I'm sure it was not hilarious at the time it occurred. While I am in no way encouraging calling your child a f**king anything (because I certainly do not, out loud), much less the R-word, I completely sympathize with how a parent can be so tried by the apparent brain damage of their children that they lose the head-mouth filter. When angry, I try to stay further away from them than I can reach with my arm, and count to three (sometimes ten depending on the level of rage) before speaking to them.

Corey has given Jake and Landen detailed instructions on how to clean their ears by using their fingertips and the suds from their hair on numerous occasions. It makes no sense then, why it took me EIGHT cotton swabs (both sides) to clean one set of ears on Friday night. And they do not give a rat's ass about having clean teeth.

I really feel like they are both too old for me to sit on the other side of the shower curtain doing call-and-response to ensure they are completing all the requirements of cleaning themselves. Or to watch them brush their teeth or dry their bodies. I'm definitely certain that they both know that blood and vomit are irregular activities that should be reported immediately, not concealed to be found out later.

I caught one of them in the parking lot of the YMCA yesterday with an open car door that did not belong to him. When I asked "What the f**k are you doing Why are you holding someone's car door open?!" he responded that he was just seeing if people were locking their doors.

Yesterday there was gum-chewing, which there will never be in my presence again. Why, you ask? Because the offending child asked me to roll down the car window so the gum could be discarded, which I obliged. Thirty minutes later, as we are returning to the car in the heat of midday, I noticed the wad of about six chewed pieces of gum sitting on the side of my car. When the boy tried to remove it, it turned into a giant, melted, sliding mess on his finger, clothes and door of my car, which Corey the Hero later removed with gasoline.

When I called Corey in a blind rage and crying to express my awe, disgust and anger, all he said was "They're boys, Nell. We're stupid. Put on the damn helmet, baby. That's all I can tell you."