Day 2 of Rockin’ Rooster’s high school career, and we’ve quickly discovered that he may be a teenager on the outside, but on the inside, he’s still my spastic boy-child.
How many of you have both boy and girl children? Those of you who do have probably noticed something. Girls tend to be more put-together from the onset. Perhaps this is God’s way of preparing females to be the all-knowing, take-care-of-everything people they will one day have to be.
Boys, on the other hand, come into this world outfitted as space cadets. Bless their little hearts. Boys are often the sweetest of the two sexes, but I believe this might be due to the fact that their minds are too busy flitting from one thing to another to hold grudges and whatnot.
It was not without hope, however, that I sent Rooster to school yesterday hoping that he had magically outgrown his natural tendencies.
Not so.
When school ended, he was the first of the Chick children to find my car. As we waited for Soccer Chick to stop doing that annoying thing where girls have to talk to every single person on their way out, Rooster and I began to chat.
“So, Mama, sometime between homeroom and first period, I lost my billfold. You know, the thing I put my entire allotment of lunch money for the week.”
Sigh.
Don’t get mad, I told myself. After all, only the night before, I was crying my eyes out over my baby growing up. I mentally placed an image of Kindergarten Rooster over the high school face I was now looking at.
“So, darling Space Case, whatever did you do? Did you get money from your sister, by chance?”
Oh no. That would have been too easy. He sucked it up and went without lunch. I felt terrible. Even more so because a few days before school started, I had lectured the Chick children on not making a 911 call to my office demanding money or lunch. I tend to be a hard-core disciplinarian. Mr. AuburnChick is a softee. I cannot tell you the number of times he showed up at that school last year with a Subway sandwich for girl-child. Yeah, it got to where he didn’t need to show picture ID to the staff.
That’s embarrassing.
So, after this lecture, you better believe that Rooster did not call either one of us to tell us about his mishap.
I felt terrible.
Rooster, surprisingly, was cool as a cucumber and readily accepted blame. He knew he would be making his lunch the rest of the week.
Well, after coming home, he washed his clothes (yes, I make my kids wash, dry and fold their own stuff), and he excitedly called me from the laundry room.
Yep, you guessed it. He found his wallet, money intact. That morning, he had changed his shorts after he realized that the pair he was wearing was dirty (go figure…he finally wants to wear clean clothes!). The only problem was that he didn’t remove the wallet he had already placed in one of the pockets. And he had forgotten this fact. Until he pulled the shorts out of the washing machine.
Wet or not, it was a great moment.
Until Tuesday morning (yes, this story gets better…keep reading)…
A grocery shopping trip yesterday afternoon left us with a well-stocked fridge. There was plenty of food for lunch, and Rooster decided to take his lunch. I dropped off the kids with a wave and went along my merry way to work.
As I reached down to grab my own lunch from the seat, I noticed something.
Yep. You guessed it.
It was Rooster’s lunch.
Sigh.
Do you remember my post a couple of weeks ago about finding white hairs on my head?
This is a classic example of why.
All I could picture was my boy-child, starving at lunch again. I tried to call him, but apparently he decided to follow the rules and turned off his phone.
So, I texted Soccer Chick instead. She doesn’t follow the rules. She texted back immediately, assuring me that her spastic brother had taken his lunch money, “Just in case.” Good thing.
I’m thinking I might just have to go back to Office Max and purchase that extra insurance for the graphing calculator I purchased yesterday. In Rooster’s own words, “I don’t exactly have a good track record for being responsible.”
Ya think?
Some things never change.
Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: boys, girls, school, teenagers | 2 Comments »
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