Written for Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #407
using the word ‘mandate’, Gerry & Sue’s Weekly
Prompts Wednesday Challenge (‘stodgy’), and
Sue & Gerry’s Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge
(‘dainty’). In 71 words exactly, this is my little story.
Tag: Girls
Boys Will Be Boys
Written for Stream of Consciousness – “What’s that smell?”,
Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – “humility” and
Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – “departure”.
Growing up, it was just me and my sister – two girls doing girl things. And while we weren’t always best of friends, it was just the two of us. It wasn’t my fault that my mother went into labor smack in the middle of my sister’s 4th birthday party; after making a hasty departure for the hospital, my mother arrived just in time for me to be born …. on my sister’s birthday …. and she’s never really forgiven me. I mean, she says she has but deep down there’s resentment. But I digress.
Bitterness for being born on her birthday aside, we managed to get along ok. And we both had a bunch of little girlfriends who’d come over the house to play and swim in our pool. There’s a definite advantage to having the only pool on the block – even if it was inflatable and barely three feet deep. We always had lots of friends over but there were never any boys around and, if an interloper did show up, he was quickly shown the way out before he had a chance to dip his you-know-what in our pool!
For the first six years of my life, I had very little contact with boys .… except for my cousins and they didn’t count. In elementary school boys were just tolerated; they were looked upon as excess baggage. Of course, that all changed when I hit my teen years and realized boys had potential. I had a couple of crushes early on but nothing earth-shattering. Then, at the ripe old age of 17, I went on a blind date with a guy named Bill and together we learned all about boys and girls, how they were so wondrously different and incredibly well-made for each other. I was stunned by how much I didn’t know about boys.
So, wouldn’t you just know it! God, in his infinite humorous nature, decided to bless me with only boy babies. All those years of playing with my baby girl dolls, changing their diapers fashioned from paper napkins, powdering their petite girlie bottoms, all that didn’t come close to what these boys were packing! It didn’t matter how well I knew Bill’s anatomy; he didn’t wear a diaper and I had never changed one …. at least not a boy’s. Talk about a rude awakening!
Let me just explain something very quickly here. When infant girls are getting their diapers changed, sometimes they pee but it’s a dainty little trickle that gently disappears into the absorbent pad under them. When infant boys are getting their diapers changed, parents put on a hazmat suit because that nozzle has a mind of its own and it is gonna spray wherever it wants.
Oh sure, parents can buy little wee-wee teepees to hold over the wee-wee while their baby boy giggles at them, but most times that thing is flying around like an errant garden hose and the pee goes everywhere. And, of course, that’s where men first learn to pee with no hands – yawning and stretching and placing their hands behind their heads in a very satisfied “look-what-I-can-do” sort of way. Usually in those situations, there will be spillage. I have found, for the most part, the male species is not very discriminating and is quite happy to just “hit something“.
Which brings me to the heart of this story.
I love my boys and, in all humility, Bill and I did a good job raising them. BUT, nature will take its course no matter what we do. And let me tell you, there is nothing …. and I mean NOTHING …. like the overwhelming musky, barn-like odor that punches you in the face when you open the door to a boy’s bedroom. For the love of all things holy, what is going on in there? How is it possible for boys …. little or big …. to ravage so many briefs, boxers or tighty-whities in one day, not to mention the now-fossilized face cloths (and sometimes my good hand towels)?
We’re all adults here and you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Well, I finally reached the end of my rope. It became unbearable for me to do my teen sons’ laundry, let alone keep up with it, so I threw down the gauntlet. I led the boys to the laundry room where I proceeded to write on my washing machine with a Sharpie. In all the corresponding receptacles were the words “DETERGENT GOES HERE.” “BLEACH GOES HERE.” “SOFTENER GOES HERE.” I’m sure they didn’t believe me when I said I was done doing their wash. After two weeks of their laundry piling up and them running out of clean clothes and their sheets desperate enough to literally walk off the bed and leap into the washing machine, they finally got the message!
As the old saying goes, boys will be boys, and I never had a problem with what was going on in my sons’ bedrooms …. within reason; if I thought something dangerous was happening, I’d be in there in a flash. I’d just had enough of cleaning up their messes. Now they’re grown men, good men, married with children, and they get to deal with their own kids’ smells, sprays, spills and secretions.
And when I see them lugging a basketful of laundry to their washing machines, I chuckle and know I did them a huge favor.
NAR©2024
One of my readers once commented that I have a song for every story. Well, who am I to argue?
From the Broadway show/movie Hair, this is “Sodomy”.
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