Girls Don't Even Stink

This morning nothing went as planned in our home. After the evangelist meetings at our church, the boys came home to watch hockey and it was so bad they went to bed before the game was done…although if Daddy had said they could stay up later to finish the game I am sure they would have…and it was a good hour past bedtime when they went to bed.

So no one was overly excited to get up this morning. It’s cold. It’s dark. We are tired. And it’s only Wednesday.

S1 informed me of all the wrong things his brothers were doing. S2 didn’t want anyone to speak to him. S3 wandered aimlessly trying to swat flies and bug his brothers. S4 couldn’t decide what breakfast to eat, and then decided he needed a lunch packed like his brothers.

We had to bring pumpkins for an elementary school teacher and when S1 escaped his bickering brothers to pick them out, S3 realized it was time to leave and he had no shoes and he had no idea where they were and he was sure we would leave and where are his socks and does he have a coat and his crocs weren’t his favorite and he was not ready and it was sheer panic and tears on his part.

We quickly drove down the driveway to pick up S1 and five pumpkins. He was sure I was about to leave him and was torn between running to the suburban to make sure I seen him and knowing you should never run towards a moving vehicle and so he stood there with a panicked look waving his arms his arms in the air.

As I am trying to load up all the pumpkins, make sure S4 is buckled, trying to get the dog to jump in the suburban because we forgot to lock her in the house and I didn’t have time to take her up to the house and it’s just complete chaos. I look up to see our elderly neighbor who is leaving for the winter today. I like A.V. a lot. I waved hello and told him to have a great trip. I am sure he walked away shaking his head. It was truly like one of those moments in ‘Fireproof’.

S3 whimpered all the way to school. We got to school and he brightened right up. Everyone but S4 grabbed a pumpkin and S1 grabbed two, which was manly of him. It seemed the morning was going to be okay, we weren’t too late to school and the morning was all coming together now.

Until we got to the preschool room. S4 walks into the room growling and snarling and stomping his feet like his is a giant dinosaur. The first little girl we seen was half the size of S4 and her eyes got huge and her little lip quivered in fear and confusion. S4 wasn’t listening to me to hush so I grabbed his arm and forcefully told him to ‘knock it off. You are scaring the little kids.’ Now, these kids are older than him but he is bigger, I suddenly realized. Instantly he hangs his head.

I know I am in big trouble now.

He grips the hammer loop of the bib overalls I am wearing and shuffles to the table. I make a quick exit with the boys. As soon as we walk out of the room, S4 begins to wail. He wails down the hall all the way to S1’s locker. I hear a little girl ask S1 “what’s wrong with your brother? He sounds like a hound dog.”

We go to S2’s locker. He refuses to hug his brother. Then he changes his mind, thankfully. I have to chat a moment with S2’s teacher because he has been sick the last two days. S4 whimpers the whole time and then refuses to walk out of the room. I carry him out, set him up on his feet and force him to walk to S3’s room.

S3’s teacher sees me coming and just starts snickering at us. She says hello to S4 who hides and puts his head down to pout. He refuses to walk out of school, but S3 was ecstatic to walk into his room.

I have to carry S4 out of the school. He is straight as a board. I set him on the sidewalk and he transforms into normal boy, takes my hand and says “where to now, Moma?”

“Home, where I think I will send you back to bed.”

“But,” he whines, “I don’t even like home.”

“I don’t even care.” I pick him up, set him in his car seat and begin to strap him in. “You were grouchy and you didn’t even want to hug your brothers.”

“But I just don’t need to hug them,” he explains, “just girls think that.”

“Well, they are your brothers and they are your brothers for forever,” I continue arguing with my three year old, “you had better hug them because you are not going to see them until three thirty tonight. That’s all day, mister, so you had better tell your brothers goodbye and hug them.”

“But, Moma,” he says in an ‘I can’t believe I have to explain this to you’ voice as I settle into the drivers seat to head home, “that’s just what girls think. Girls have to hug. They aren’t strong like boys. They don’t even stink. Moma, girls don’t even STINK.” He looked out the window, conversation over.

As if that explains it all.

I just wanted to bang my head on the steering wheel. Instead, I just drank some more coffee and drove home, secure in thinking that as a girl, I will never stink.
I leave you with this image of S4, the epitamy of wisdom and quite obviously, style.