blood, guts and gore

My son is 18 years old now. He works. He's taking classes at an excellent college. He lives about 10 minutes away - and he's still always at my door or calling my cellphone.

He comes over and we go out for coffee or he raids the refrigerator. He runs the risk of me putting him to work, but he chances it anyway.

Not that long ago we were both sitting in the Florida room talking and going over stuff he did when he was a kid and I looked over at him and said, "There are days I can't believe I let you live..." and he said, "I know, my life expectancy in this house was 14!" - he makes me laugh.

That statement was accurate too.
He was a pain in the ass for three years.

If I had the energy to write all the stuff my son has done in those three years, I would easily be on Volume 17 or so and each book would be at least 300+ pages long.

We will NEVER run out of ways to horrify the boy once he starts seriously dating - and just WAIT 'til that child has kids...

I've had sole custody of my kids since they were one and three years old. Their father lives about five minutes away and has liberal visitation at my discretion.

Only one time in the last 17 years can either of us name a time when I said he couldn't take them when he wanted and that was over a trip I had planned for months to take them to see my mother for a week out of state.

I'm old-fashioned in that I believe my time is better served being home and raising my kids. So, that's what I've done - for 18 years now, two more to go.

I've been fortunate to be able to do that; especially in this economy.

When their father and I divorced, I went out and bought a computer and then learned HTML and started my own company. This allowed me to stay at home and covered extra expenses for 13 years.

Plenty of women work outside of the home and that's their choice and I don't really care what anyone does. That's a personal choice. This was mine.

In other words, I've been with both of these kids nearly every single day of their lives for the mass majority of their existence.

When you live with a teenage boy, as a female, your whole perspective changes. This whole experience has resulted in me not being phased by anything physical in life anymore.

There comes a point where you're just... so over it all. You can't even be moved to be horrified by anything. You've come to terms with the fact that your kid is going to do some really moronic things and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

It would be like trying to stop a train wreck.

The sooner you reach that point, the better - because those little heathens will totally use it against you if you don't.

Everyone has a role.

Their role is to try to get a rise out of you.
Your role is to not kill them for it.

Sometimes this involves tactics, maneuvers and mental warfare that would put the Army to shame.

I think this started to sink in with my son the day I saw him eating the decorative cinnamon sticks I had in the cupboard that I never bothered boxing after Christmas. He was 15 at the time.

The conversation went like this:

Me: "What on earth are you chewing on boy?"
The Genius: "Uh... nothing."
stare
The Genius: "Fine! This!"

as he shows me a half eaten piece of bark looking, mangled, wet mess

Me: unmoved..."You know those are poisonous, right?"

his turn to stare...I don't know what made me say it, but I'm an opportunist, so I went on...

Me: "Yeah, you're suppose to stir tea with those. Not eat them. I heard they were quite dangerous."

He spent the next couple of hours checking in with me to see if I was kidding him or not and if he was going to die.

Me: "I don't know. I'm kind of curious myself."

He stopped eating my decorations.

This is what my frame of mind has been reduced to as a parent.
IRONICALLY, this reverse psychology seems to... work.

Up until that point, I had spent 15 years trying to save his ass.

All that accomplished was keeping him alive long enough to allow him time to fuck with me about whatever it is I warned him about for all those years.

NOW, I tell him to do stuff all the time because quite frankly, no one can be that dumb - and if you are, after all this time on earth, we need to weed you out of the gene pool anyway.

If I'm to be honest, I didn't do it for the reverse psychology. I did it because he was driving me insane and it kept me from killing him.

Whatever works though.

It's a universal truth that guys will go out of their way to try to get other guys to do something sick, disgusting or stupid.

He accepts these kinds of comments from the males in his life without thought because they're guys and have their own understanding.

He never expects it from me.

However, when I tell him to do stuff now, he just gets nervous.
It's like poetic justice.

Another example would be when he spent a week picking up and putting down this nearly empty gallon of cranberry juice I had sitting next to my desk because I was obviously too lazy to get up and throw it out.

It's my desk, my only personal space in this whole house... I'll do whatever I want with it!

Again, he was 15 at the time.
What it is with boys at 15...

He had been wanting to drink it since he saw it because I spent a lot of time yelling at him to put it down and it totally grossed me out.

Then one day, I was just done.

Me: "FINE! DRINK IT! COME ON! ALL OF IT!"

because after a decade and a half of raising a boy practically by yourself, you're willing to spin the wheel a few times...

After he took a sip, I went on to list all the germs I could think of that could have been floating around in said cranberry juice.

He didn't get sick, but I did torture him with it for a few hours - which brought me great joy. I knew he'd be fine.

Know the funny part? I don't think he'll ever threaten to drink anything from on or around my desk again.

Battle won.

Side Note: After testing him the other day by telling him to finish the glass of pop on my desk - which he refused, makes me believe that he did actually learn something from that day! Okay, it was that and the fact that he flat out said, "I don't trust ANYTHING from your desk" - Right on. Mission accomplished!

Then one day...

I get handed a pair of bloody pliers that were locked into place by a grinning 15 year old boy who was all proud of himself for removing his own tooth.

staring at the ceiling

Really, what was I suppose to say to that? "Good job, honey!" - I think not. So I just gave him that, "I have no idea how you've managed to make it to this age without getting hit by a bus - I'm thinking about getting you head gear for Christmas" look instead and verbalized nothing.

The boy needed braces on his straight teeth that didn't need any braces because he had an impacted tooth.

Alright.
$5600.00 later...

Once the loose tooth (see above) was yanked out by my genius son, they scheduled his oral surgery.

This consisted of cutting a hole in the roof of his mouth to expose the tooth whose roots were hitting his sinuses (hence the impacted part of the equation).

They then attached a chain to the sinus offending tooth and to his braces to yank it slowly down into place (into the man-made hole that my son created).

Well.

Apparently, the two stitches holding the flap of skin that they cut into the roof of his mouth to expose the impacted tooth - kept falling out and it was bothering him.

I don't care if it's bothering you! Those stitches are keeping your brains from falling out!

Anyway, instead of saying something - what does my son do?

He takes the same pliers again and RIPS the piece of skin out of his mouth.

This all happened when I was in the Florida room. He was in the first floor bathroom off of the living room where my former husband was.

My former husband didn't even call me in.
I think he was trying to save the boy's life.

Ten minutes later, the boy comes out to sit next to me after and informs me of what he's done.

There was blood EVERYWHERE.

He did this while he was wearing white pants and a white shirt - and then had the absolute nerve to be mad that he got blood all over his clothes..

Obviously, he didn't anticipate blood SQUIRTING out of his mouth.

It took about 10 minutes for the bleeding to stop...FROM HIS MOUTH.

oh my GOD

.........and then he hands me the shirt and asks me if I can get the blood out of it.

Jesus Christ.

The shirt didn't need to be cleaned.
It needed to be BURNED.

I've seen accident victims with less blood on their clothes.

By this time he's laughing about it.

Really, this child isn't uneducated.
We don't have mold spores that could explain this.
We don't have lead in our water either.

I can offer no reasoning.

Know what I did?
I didn't even blink.
I just started...

.................................................You know you can get tetanus from pliers like that!

Then I proceeded to go over every blood borne illnesses I could think of.
No more pliers for him.

Kids should come with a warning label and a free box of booze.