cobbling

The other night, R. was talking about how boring his sister M. is. During the conversation, though, he remembered that she’s actually very fun.

“Oh, we should totally record this conversation and e-mail it to her.” He runs upstairs, rummages for about 3 seconds, and comes back with a digital tape recorder that I gave him several years ago. It seemed amazing that he located it, given what he calls his “looking disability”. Example: the other day, I came home and he had a small cut from “cobbling”. (You might want to see the movie, ‘Away We Go’, it’s sweet and quirky and the lead characters are attractive in a normal way, not an over-the-top manufactured way. I don’t want to spoil it, but the relevant bit is that they call whittling “cobbling”, which caused R. to want to be 'the kind of son who’s cobbling on the porch when you get up in the morning’. Um, okay.) At any rate, he has this cut and says, “We should definitely keep band-aids around.”

“We do have band-aids,” I respond.

“Right, maybe we do, but not where anyone could ever find them.” I notice that he has some scotch tape or something on his finger.

“R, I’m pretty sure any random person who’s ever been in a house before would be able to find them in about 30 seconds.”

“That’s not true, mom. Go try it, I’ll time you.”

I walk into the bathroom, open the top drawer next to the sink, and pull out the band-aids. Seven seconds.

“Mom, seriously, no one would look there.”

This might be a trait that comes down the paternal line; his father doesn’t know, for example, what goes in the top drawer of a dresser (socks, underwear, things like that =normal; shoes, car parts, silverware = unusual), and I mean that in the least judgmental way possible.

He starts taping: “Hello M. For a bit of background, I think you’re very boring, but it’s not all your fault. We’re going to talk about this a little bit on tape.”

I’m thinking about how this is going to go down, like when R gave me the most helpful tip a few weeks ago that my pants made me look fat. “Oh, R., is this the proverbial, “those pants make your butt look big comment?” “Not just the butt,” he responds. “It’s the whole pants area.” I have to say, as disappointing as it was, I’ve really been enjoying that turn of phrase, “the whole pants area.” I told the boys at work, who laughed pretty hard, and now each time I eat, they do this motion, palms together, horizontal and then fanning out, skyward and landward, and just say, “the whole pants area.”

So thinking about the pants area comment, I was a cross between enthusiastic about Riley's creativity, and nervous about how it could go, sibling-wise. Kidney donation-wise. "Hey, R., maybe we could do this on the weekend when we have more time."

“Yeah, Mom, that’s totally gonna happen. Hey, guys, I can’t hang out this weekend. See, me and my mom are making a fake radio show for my sister. Yeah, so, kinda busy, you understand.”

At any rate, don't give up on the blog just yet. It's not gonna be all about pants. Something is bound to happen...