Roler Shift

                “Sooooo, did you have a good time last night?”  My son asked me in what can only be described as ‘dad’ voice complete with hand on hip and cell phone gesturing to adequately age him about 30 years his senior.

                “Sure did.”  I flippantly responded while one eye opened drinking my coffee, hip propped against the kitchen counter.

                “I thought we’d already discussed the fact that I really just don’t feel comfortable with you going on dates with men I don’t know?  I just don’t like it mom.  I don’t like it one bit.  I think it’s high time this man,” (the tone here was more like derision, and he really did use the term ‘high time’) “comes over for dinner already.  Make meatloaf, it’s delicious and impossible not to like.  Now, if you need me, I’ll be in my room playing Xbox since my grounding has finally expired.  Will you get my controller down?  I know you hide it on top of the bookcase.”

                I certainly understand his hesitancy and concern.  For all he knows he may be spending a night with the grandparents while I am getting a ride to dinner with a man that subscribes to the Ariel Castro form of dating.  One minute I’m there and the next I’ve been surprise adopted for the better part of a decade.  Happens.  Yes, my little boy has officially entered into the ‘Protector of the Mother’ phase in his life.  Not a terrible transition I suppose.  Last year at this time I wrote a blog about my sweet sweet boy starting sixth grade and my uncertainty of his becoming a teenager and my ability to deal with him getting older.  I reread it and have some serious updating to do.

                “Hey sweetpea, want to cuddle on the couch and watch our recording of AGT?  I’ll make bacon popcorn and everything.”  I asked my son while he was immersed in Minecrafting. 

                *silence

                “Alex?  Did you hear me?”

                *key tapping

                I looked for a headset or some other form of parental silencing, but could find nothing of the sort.  Hmmm.  Try just outright ridiculousness topped with accosting to grab attention then.

                “After gardening all afternoon my hands smell like cilantro.  Smell them.  Do you think they smell like cilantro?” This being said while I casually waved my scent questioned hand in his face.

                Very quickly he turned, and in a look of pure horror and resignation about the fact that there is no coming back from this one, he looked down.  Then I saw it, sitting on the desk with the screen backlit and the words ‘Conference Call’ screaming their utter discomfiture, I realized that he was on speaker phone with not ONE girl, but enough to constitute a GD conference call!  Seriously?!  I suppose he won’t make that mistake again.  I feel after living with me for twelve plus years he would know by now that I am less than traditional and more than willing to mortify him at the drop of a hat, either on purpose or purely by cosmic genius.  What I’m sayin is, you gots to warn a mother.  Am I right? 

                For the sake of full disclosure I will admit that I have played many a practical joke or pulled off some sort of trick just for the sake of attempting to match my son’s face to his hair color, and because of such things he has returned the favor to the best of his abilities in spades.  I also force his participation in an assorted array of activities from gardening and canning to puzzle doing and mini book clubs.  I make him eat things he doesn’t enjoy for the benefit of a healthy diet, I force him to clean his room, he has to earn money through manual labor to pay for expensive things, his napkin must be his lap’s best friend to eat a meal, for over a decade I have tortured him with having to take a shower (which recently has turned from a relative of water boarding to a request, ewwww, I know what that means) and in return we get to have what can only be described as a really really good time. 

                While canning yesterday he casually says, “So, it this fella coming over for dinner this week or what?”

                “Yes.”

                “Good.  Man, I sure hope my hands don’t smell like cilantro or anything.......”  He innocently drops while stuffing green beans into a pint jar and smirking a little.

                So while the teenage stuff (you know, girls and hair and weird smells and flash mob attitude changes and a new found need to shower twice a day and the lack of socks that end up in the laundry and the conference calls and the shit talking on xbox games and the ability to know all and so on and so forth) still makes me nervous about the next seven birthdays, I still can’t help but look forward to every adventure we have yet to experience.  After a whole day of doing everything I wanted to do without complaint, he ended it by lying on the couch with me and watching Mythbusters (his choice).  When he was almost asleep (but swore he wasn’t tired) he says, “Mommy, I’m super happy you had me when you were so young.  It means we have all the time in the world to spend together.”  Heart.  Melted.  (But for the record, he’s still not getting a Playstation 4 or some such nonsense and I probably shouldn’t ride in a car with Carrie.)

                I have been so completely worried about how this whole ‘getting older’ act was going to work when preformed by my son that I missed the part where this whole past year has been spectacular.  Not that Disney is knocking on our door to make a sitcom based on our storied life or anything, in fact there are plenty of days where I wish that I could legally, what was affectionately called in the time of my elders, ‘beat his little ass’ (of course I don’t want to hit my child.  Well, I did want to yesterday, but not now.  For sure not right this minute.) but most of the time being my son’s mom is kind of awesome.  Plus I’m pretty sure with the amount of blackmail pics and etc I have saved up on my hard drive mixed with the speed at which social media can circulate an image, I’ve got a little insurance that teenage years will not be nearly as bad as Nostradamus has predicted (side note to all parents of young children, take lots of pics of your daughters with awful haircuts and ridiculous outfits and pics of your sons wearing girl's clothing and playing with My Little Ponies.  You will all thank me for this in about twelve years or so).  In fact I look forward to this new chapter of parenting where the roles begin their shift around the earth’s axis to their eventual opposing resting place causing life altering cataclysmic events and so on and so forth.  A ‘Roler Shift’ if you will.  That’s science.