I have had my son, Clyde, for nearly thirteen years. Thirteen years of dealing with crazy boy energy. Thirteen years of dealing with someone whose reaction to falling down and hurting themselves is to fall down and hurt themselves all over again. Thirteen years of finding out that he even got hurt in the first place by following the trail of blood on the kitchen floor. (I never thought I’d have to establish a “clean up your own blood” rule in my house, but there you have it.)
You’d think, then, that after thirteen years, I would be used to all things boy. I would be used to energy levels that ping between “out of control” and “way, way out of control.” I would be used to watching someone vibrate like a tuning fork when asked to, not even “sit still,” but rather to “sit in a stiller manner than before.” You’d think I’d be used to all that. And you’d be very wrong.
The problem is that as soon as I get used to one level of hyper, say the nine-year-old boy version of hyper, he cranks it up another level entirely. Forget “this one goes to eleven” and try “this one goes to infinity minus one.”
Activity only seems to make it worse: how else would you explain someone coming home from a two hour workout session and immediately deciding that the best way to cool down is to chase their sister around the house while pretending to be possessed by a demon. (Actually, we’re all hoping that he was pretending.)
The worst part, for me at least, is that I have absolutely no personal experience with this. Not only have I never been a pubescent boy, I have also never before lived with one. The fights my sister and I got into always involved who got the best spot on the couch, not who could make the other one scream the loudest.
My husband, who has both been a pubescent boy and, having two brothers, has also grown up with pubescent boys, is “luckier” in this regard. His reaction to most things Clyde is to sigh and say, “The only people who can stand twelve-year-old boys are other twelve-year-old boys,” right before suggesting to Clyde that he go hang out with some of his friends.
Of course, he then follows this up by telling me about when he was a twelve-year-old boy hanging out with his friends, and then acts surprised when his stories of bloodshed, destruction, and visiting the emergency room multiple times in one day don’t exactly have a calming effect on me.
In consolation, I suppose, there is always the fact that living with all of this boy energy makes me understand past historical expeditions so much better now. I used to think about the people who decided to ski solo to the South Pole, or be the first to climb a treacherous mountain peak, and think, why? But now, watching Clyde careen off every available surface in the house like a human pinball, I can understand at least the urge the other people around these famous explorers might have had to just get them out of the house, by any means necessary.
It was probably that kind of thinking that made hunting down and killing a wooly mammoth seem like a better idea than simply going out into the forest to collect nuts and berries. At least as far as the moms were concerned. I can just imagine that conversation. “What? You’re going hunting again? For a month? Take the boys. Yes, all of them. No, really: it’ll be good for them. I don’t know: tell them it’s an initiation or something.”
I don’t suppose anyone out there knows where I can find a wooly mammoth these days?