Boys R Stinky
About a month ago my 12 year old daughter had 4 friends over for a spend-the-night. It was exactly what I expected -- 9 hours of non-stop giggling, snacking, screaming at a scary movie, group decisions about 'what we're going to do now' and a 3 a.m. raid on the donuts -- my arrival at which made one girl quake in fear until I asked whether they'd left me one. Exhausted, frowsy, and still dear friends, they all left at 10 the next morning and I'd felt I'd had my friends over, too.
Last night my newly 11 year old boy had five friends for a sleep-over. My unbiasesed, cooly anthropological conclusion? Boys are stinky. Every single one had a DS, of course, and mysteriously, they could all tell which identical white DS was theirs, whose dropped identical white stylus was whose, and whether the power cord on the left of the sofa or the right of the sofa was theirs. Whatever.
They played Wii and some game they can all download on the DS at the same time, and spent so much time bossing each other about what to do with their imaginary fighting creatures, screaming in occasional victory and telling each other to 'shut up' that I had to leave the room.
Is this normal? I asked my husband. Are they having fun? Are they getting along or should I send them home?
This is what boys do, he assured me.
Then you go in there. I don't understand it.
At 2:30 they woke me from a doze playing flashlight tag, after I told them it was too small an apartment for flashlight tag. They asked me where the toy click gun and the light saber were 10 seconds after I wrenched them from sweaty hands and hid them in my room. They yelled at each other to shut up some more, and giggled fitfully whenever someone said 'fart'.
Exactly one child brushed his teeth and two of them never even changed clothes.
Strangest of all was the food. At midnight, none of them wanted a donut. This morning they had left an entire bag of potato chips and an entire bag of Tostitos. There were peanut M&Ms still in the bowl!
My son, who must be on his 20th straight hour of video games, (It's his birthday, after all) assures me that everyone had a good time. I'm going to have to take his word for it.
Last night my newly 11 year old boy had five friends for a sleep-over. My unbiasesed, cooly anthropological conclusion? Boys are stinky. Every single one had a DS, of course, and mysteriously, they could all tell which identical white DS was theirs, whose dropped identical white stylus was whose, and whether the power cord on the left of the sofa or the right of the sofa was theirs. Whatever.
They played Wii and some game they can all download on the DS at the same time, and spent so much time bossing each other about what to do with their imaginary fighting creatures, screaming in occasional victory and telling each other to 'shut up' that I had to leave the room.
Is this normal? I asked my husband. Are they having fun? Are they getting along or should I send them home?
This is what boys do, he assured me.
Then you go in there. I don't understand it.
At 2:30 they woke me from a doze playing flashlight tag, after I told them it was too small an apartment for flashlight tag. They asked me where the toy click gun and the light saber were 10 seconds after I wrenched them from sweaty hands and hid them in my room. They yelled at each other to shut up some more, and giggled fitfully whenever someone said 'fart'.
Apparently it was all okay because they lived through the night, although I told them a 1, 2, 3, and 4 am to hush. At 5 a.m. I told them to shut up.
Exactly one child brushed his teeth and two of them never even changed clothes.
Strangest of all was the food. At midnight, none of them wanted a donut. This morning they had left an entire bag of potato chips and an entire bag of Tostitos. There were peanut M&Ms still in the bowl!
My son, who must be on his 20th straight hour of video games, (It's his birthday, after all) assures me that everyone had a good time. I'm going to have to take his word for it.
posted by Whoopla at
12:29 PM
1 Comments:
Your piece is a sad commentary on the sameness I see among young people throughout North America. That you son and his friends had the same video consoles, attention spans, as well as eating and sanitary habits, make it clear to me that that succeeding generations will not be as interesting, innovative, or independent as previous ones. When I was the age of your son, I had many friends, and yet I recall many more things that made each of us different than the same. I am sure if you had a slumber party with my eight closest friends and me when I was eleven you would have a difficult time identifying many similar characteristics among us. I think you would perhaps say we enjoyed each others company, and admired some interest or personality trait of our friends, but rarely would we ever adopt a characteristic of a friend. Somehow we knew, even then, who we were, and all of us are as different today as we were then.
I love reading biographies and old diaries, and find that children were much more independent thinking in the past than they are today. Thank God Abraham Lincoln, George Gershwin, Bill Gates, Teddy Roosevelt, Claude Monet, Thomas Edison, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein all lived in a world that encouraged young people to use their free time to develop their unique personalities. I can’t imagine any of them doing something mundane or repetitive like playing a video game on their birthday. Instead, if they had the time, they would each probably be adding to a skill or interest that would make them the incredible individuals they became.
By
Charly Mann, at 2:46 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home