Well the worst that could happen did. I “secured” the trash bags with the magazines in it Tuesday morning. After work I had to stop by the grocery store to pick up some items. When I returned home Ktreva wasn’t there yet, and the house seemed quiet… too quiet.
I enter the house and there is not a sound or sign of anyone. By this time Boopie should have been home, but there was no sign of him. As I carry the groceries to the kitchen I stop by his room to see if he’s hiding in there. All of a sudden he jumps up and is pulling up his pants exclaiming, “I’m changing my clothes because I’m sweaty” I’m thinking to myself, “Yea, those forearm exercises do break out a sweat.”

Then he tells me he tried to take out the trash, but he canÂ’t pick up the bags. Well of course he did, he wanted more nekked girlie goodness. At least this time he tried to come up with a plausible story as to why the bags are not in the same condition as I had left them. Although he wasnÂ’t able to untie the knots I put into the bag, I could see he tried.

Then for the next hour he wouldnÂ’t make eye contact with me and was very enthusiastic about helping out when I asked him to do stuff. Yea, guilt is a good thing to exploit when you have some chores that need to be done.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:56 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Upon returning home from work today I found the house still standing, Boopie did not blow it up, burn it down, or break anything that IÂ’m aware of yet. However, I did learn two pieces of information about my eldest.

First is that he is much like my sister in his inability to do something mischievously with out giving out tell tale signals. You know like getting into something he shouldnÂ’t have or playing with something that heÂ’s been told he shouldnÂ’t. Now, to be fair I did spend years learning how to investigate crimes. IÂ’m not saying IÂ’m an expert crime scene investigator like Gill Grissom, detective like Adrian Monk or even some actual investigative person, but I know what to look for and a lot of tricks of the trade. Unfortunately Boopie barely tries to cover his tracks.

Secondly I learned that my son is not gay. There was some speculation a couple of years ago, but after today IÂ’m pretty sure we can say he likes the girls.

How do I know this? During some thorough house cleaning I decided to throw out all of my old Playboy magazines that IÂ’ve kept hidden for years. I used to have a subscription, and wouldnÂ’t throw them away. Before anyone says anything, yes I looked at the pictures. Yet I also read the articles. They really did have some good writers. I let my subscription lapse 7 years ago and havenÂ’t read one since, so I canÂ’t say what they are like today.

I placed about 6 years worth of magazines into trash bags, and set them to be tossed with the trash on Wednesday. When I got home today one of the bags was untied and the nicely arranged magazines were no longer nicely arranged. They were in the house, so it had to be him. Sure he tried to put the bag back into the same position I left it in, but he wasnÂ’t remotely successful.

Now I thought about calling him out on this, but then I decided not to. Hell, by the time I was his age I had a nice collection of nudie mags my friendÂ’s would steal from their fatherÂ’s collection. Seriously, whatÂ’s the worst thatÂ’s going to happen?

Posted by: Contagion at 05:37 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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It's BoopieÂ’s first day of High School.

First I canÂ’t believe heÂ’s old enough for high school, especially since he still tends to act like heÂ’s in fifth grade. The hardest part for me isnÂ’t that I have a son thatÂ’s old enough to be in High School. No, itÂ’s the fact that I had to give him a key to the house and trust him to get to school by himself.

His school runs from 9:30 AM to 3:30 PM. Both Ktreva and I have to be to work by 9:00 at the latest, and for both of us we are supposed to be there between 7:00 AM and 7:30 AM. That means that in the morning Boopie has to get up, get dressed, get breakfast, clean up after himself and get out of the house and to school on time with out anyone there. It also means that I have to trust him to NOT blow up the house, break anything, stay out of stuff that he shouldnÂ’t be getting into and most importantly locking the house up after he leaves.

Now a lot of people will say, “He’s fourteen, it’s time you start trusting him.” I just can’t. Over the last year and a half I’ve trusted him with various things. I’ve given him responsibilities, duties, chores and opportunities to show me he’s matured into a trustworthy and responsible individual.

He blew each one in a major way.

IÂ’m not talking about a minor infraction; IÂ’m talking about spectacular, catastrophic failure. IÂ’ll give you an example. If you remember I gave Boopie some Softair guns for Christmas. He was given these with the stipulation that you treat them like real firearms. You were safety glasses, they are not to be used in the hosue, you do not point them at another person and you definitely do NOT shoot at anybody with them. If you have friends that come over to the house, you are responsible for them. You need to explain the rules and enforce them. If you horse around, IÂ’m going to take them away.

The first time he had a friend over and they wanted to go outside and shoot I had to interrupt and tell them not to point them at each other. The friend “Tall Boy” responded that they where just toys. To which I replied that I didn’t care, they shoot a projectile that can break glass. You will not point them at each other. All was fine for a couple of months until Boopie and Tall Boy brought over another friend, “EMO Kid” to shoot. I looked out the window and there was EMO Kid pointing one of the guns at Tall Boy. Again I pointed out that they were NOT to be pointing the guns at each other.

Not five minutes later I see Boppie and EMO Kid shooting at each other with the guns. In fact Booopie got shot and was bleeding. Now they are my Airsoft guns, and he wonÂ’t get them back. He asked if he could have them back a couple of weeks ago and I told him that he has not proven to be responsible enough for them.

So now I have to leave the boy home alone in a house with black powder, swords, axes, knives, real guns etcÂ… Sure the modern fire arms are secured and he canÂ’t get to the ammo, but that doesnÂ’t mean he might not try to play with the other stuff. Or start going through my personal stuff. Actually IÂ’m more worried about him not securing the house or breaking stuff than anything else. Either way, IÂ’m not comfortable about the whole arrangement.

Unfortunately I didnÂ’t have much of a choice.

Posted by: Contagion at 01:33 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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I’ve always joked that I was going to keep a shotgun next to the door “just in case”. Not that I plan on shooting people as they come to my door, but just in case I needed to shoot someone as they came to my door. Sometime in the last week I must have made another comment about doing that while the news was talking about possible looting in the flood area. This morning as I walked down stairs and see that Clone has placed his toy double barrel shotgun in the corner next to the door.

I had to ask him why, and he told me that it was “just in case”.

And who says kids canÂ’t learn.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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