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The other day I was reading in our local paper about our semi-famous (or rather, semi-infamous—semfamous?) Southside Shoe Tree. Because I always enjoy a good debate (and sometimes even a good old-fashioned argument), I followed up on the story online so that I could peruse the comments section. Once there I was not disappointed as people speculated on what could possibly be the purpose behind such an unnatural phenomenon. Some people said that it was a way for drug dealers to advertise. (Although since when do drug dealers need to advertise? Some things, like toilet paper and drugs, seem to come with a ready made customer base). Others said gang activity. (Somehow, I think the other gangs would make fun of a gang that was a fan of “shoe tagging,” but then again when I was in school we used to make fun of people who kept the tags on their ball caps after they bought them, so what do I know?).

And, then, of course, there was the old standby, Obama. (Whether it was Obama himself who was throwing the shoes up into the tree, celebrations by his decadently liberal followers, or despairing acts by those destroyed under his reign of terror was never made clear. In my head, however, I pictured the first scenario)

My personal theory (and one I did not post—that’s right, I’m a lurker) was that the shoe tree is where all of the shoes that are “stolen” out of children’s houses every night end up. Hey, it makes as much sense as those other theories. And besides, how else do you explain all of those stolen shoes? That’s right, I said stolen: every single time I have known of a pair of shoes to go missing from a child’s possession, not once have those shoes ever been “lost.” They have, each and every one, down to the very last flip-flop, been stolen. If you don’t believe me, just ask your children; after all, how many times have you been running late to school, only to have your child tell you: “I can’t find my shoes. Somebody must have taken them, because I left them right here.” See? Damn you, Shoe Tree Thief!

But then I started thinking: what if all of these theories turned out to be true? Could it be? Could there possibly be a tinfoil hat big enough for all of these theories to fit underneath? What if Obama, in order to get jumped into the infamous Shoe Tree Drug-Dealing Gang (slogan: “Our drugs will get you higher than a pair of Converse in a tree!”), snuck around at night stealing children’s shoes? It’s just so crazy it must be true.

If I was the Tea Party, that’s the angle I would work. Because the problem with having an organization filled with old guys (like the they do) is that those groups tend to get smaller and smaller as the years go by—unless, of course, you are constantly bringing in new, younger members. And what better way to recruit young people than to give them a way to get their mothers’ off of their backs?

“Where are your shoes?” suddenly becomes an easy question to answer. “Mom, we’ve been over this before. I told you: Obama took them. Do I need to show you the pie chart again?”

When you think about it, it’s a natural fit: children are born conspiracy theorists. Coming from a world where they have been forced to eat broccoli and memorize multiplication tables (even the twelve times!), the idea of a worldwide plot to make them miserable doesn’t seem too far-fetched to them at all.

Now if the Tea Party could only work something in there about the Tree also eating all of the missing math homework, they’d be golden.

I had never seen my son, Clyde, get quite so excited about a menu item before. But there was no doubt that he was excited: his eyes lit up and a big smile crossed his face when he saw that the restaurant we were eating at had, of all things, artichoke hearts on the menu.

“Ooh,” he said. “Artichoke hearts.” And then he turned to me and asked, “What does an artichoke look like?”

Not wanting to scare him away from this new found culinary adventuresomeness (he usually turns straight to the burger page), I tried my best to describe artichoke hearts without making them sound too “weird.” I definitely tried my best to avoid using words like “thistle” and “gourmet.” And so I said things like “spiky” and “mediterranean” instead. Unfortunately, though, I knew that I had been a little too vague when Clyde got a confused look on his face and then asked me, “But how do they walk?”

“Walk?” I repeated, now equally confused. “They don’t walk. An artichoke is a plant.”

And then the confusion on his face was replaced by disappointment, followed by a plaintive, “But it says ‘hearts’ on the menu.”

“’Heart’ in this case just means ‘middle,’” I explained.

“Oh,” he said, obviously let down. And then he turned, as usual, to the burger page.

Suddenly I had a vision of what it was, exactly, that Clyde had been hoping to order: a brimming plateful of little, bloody hearts—still warm, and, if Clyde had his way, probably still beating. Such is life when you are living with the world’s most dedicated carnivore.

I should have seen this coming years ago. After all, one of Clyde’s first complete sentences was “I’m gonna eat that burger.” (It came while we were waiting in traffic and he saw a Jack in the Box semi with a picture of a much-larger-than-life burger on its side.) And then there was the time we went snorkeling when he was six. An octopus our guide had caught and tossed in the boat had had the temerity to wrap one of its tentacles around Clyde’s leg. Seeing how upset Clyde was, the guide had promised him that he would be able to eat the octopus for dinner that very night—which Clyde had gladly done, enjoying each bite both for the flavor and the revenge.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Clyde’s sister is the most squeamish of vegetarians—even the most unrecognizable chunk of meat in our fridge will get the “gross” seal of disapproval from her. Which means, naturally, that the more “life-like” (for want of a better word) the thing Clyde can eat in front of her is, the better. The time we went snorkeling certainly wasn’t the last time his meal involved having a tentacle hanging out of his mouth. In fact, I’m sure that if he is ever served some sort of animal leg with the hoof still attached it will be the highlight of his gastronomical life.

At least until he manages to finally get his plate of beating hearts.

The worst thing about all of this is that I can’t bring myself to break Clyde of this bloodthirstiness, because deep in my heart I know that he is right. Not because I want to enjoy a steaming Aztec-style meal myself, but because I know that if you are going to be eating a fellow creature then the least you can do is to be fully aware that you are, in fact, eating something that was, up until fairly recently, still very much alive.

Especially if you are hoping to gross out your older sister.

Now that my children are both practically teenagers (well, one has always been a teenager by temperament), I sometimes feel like they don’t want me around as much. Everything about me mortifies them: the way I dress, the way I laugh, the way I chew my food—heck, they don’t even like the way I call their friends morons (especially if those friends happen to be standing right next to them at the time). However, as mortifying as I might be, every time I think they’ve gotten to the point where they don’t need me any more they turn around and actively seek me out just so they can say those three little words that every mother longs to hear.

“There’s no food.”

Wait, did I say “longs”? I meant “dreads.” And the reason I dread these three little words so much is that I never quite know when I am going to hear them next. I know what you’re thinking: don’t you usually hear them when you run out of food? Well, yes, that would be the logical time to hear them, but the fact is I usually hear them the day after I’ve gone to the grocery store, when both the cabinets and the fridge are so full that getting something out of them is like playing a game of food Jenga. “Okay, let’s see, I can pull out this can of soup—no, it’s supporting the refried beans and pasta. Wait a minute—I think the tower of tuna will support it all. Let’s give it a try… oh no! Foodalanche!”

The incongruity of having a mountain of food falling on you while there is someone standing behind you saying, “there’s no food” is not lost on me, however much it might be lost on my children. Suddenly I can emphasize with the crowds who objected so strenuously to Magritte’s famous painting “The Treachery of Images,” which, if you’ll remember from that long ago art appreciation class (or else from all the time you spent hanging out at the poster shop at the mall) was a painting of a pipe with the words, “ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe) painted directly underneath.

Luckily for me, however, unlike the crowds at Magritte’s art opening, (who were, perhaps, not quite prepared for his style), living with my perpetual teen taught me years ago that there are certain phrases that come out of their mouths to which a few pertinent words must be added by the listener. Those words are, “that I like.” Thus, “I have no shoes” becomes “I have no shoes that I like;” “There’s nothing to do,” becomes “There’s nothing to do that I like;” and, of course, “There’s no food,” becomes, “There’s no food that I like.” (Does that mean Magritte’s painting should have been entitled “ceci n’est pas une pipe que j’aime”—this is not a pipe that I like? Only his mother could tell us for sure.)

At this point, you’re probably thinking, okay, why not just buy them the food that they like then? While that sounds reasonable, there are more than a few problems with that plan (not the least of which being that my recycling bin only holds 24 pizza boxes at a time.) There is also the fact that, since their tastes seem to change on a daily basis, other than pizza I really have no idea what they’re going like. I suppose I could always take them with me when I go to to the store, and let them point and grunt at the items they want, but there’s a problem with that as well.

I think it has something to do with the fact that I’m so, well, mortifying. And apparently, not in a way that they like.

The other night my son, Clyde, played in a concert. As I dropped him off backstage I looked him over one last time, trying to make sure he had everything he needed. Black pants: check. Black shoes: check. White shirt: check. White shirt tucked into the black pants: check and check and check again (“And this time keep it tucked in!”). Violin: check. Bow (yes, he has arrived without one before): check. Music: ….

“Where is your music!?” I asked frantically.

Clyde responded with a shrug. “I dunno. Don’t worry about it: the person sitting next to me always has it.”

“Who sits next to you?”

Another shrug. Followed by another another “I dunno.” And then “It’s always someone different. But they always have the music.”

I was mortified. Not only because Clyde seemed to think it was okay to rely on an apparently ever-changing roster of stand-mates to provide his music for him, but also because it was now obvious that, unbeknownst to me, someone had slipped a cuckoo into my nest. There was no other explanation, because there was no way that one of those people could have ever come from me.

I think you know who I mean by those people. I mean the ones who show up to hike Everest in flip flops, certain that once they got there other people—people like me, who like to plan things out—will supply them with the necessary gear. The ones who tell the rest of us that we worry too much, that we make too big a deal out of everything, that we should just relax, because everything, always, works out in the end. The ones I want to shake as I scream at them that the only reason anything ever works out is because someone, somewhere, had a plan. Or maybe scream that sometimes things don’t work out in the end—sometimes, in fact, things don’t work out so much so that Outside magazine writes a feature about it and Emile Hirsch plays you in the movie version.

You think I’m overreacting? I know that there is a big difference between not bringing your music to a concert and starving to death in a broken down bus in Alaska, and that winging it on Beethoven is not the same as walking barefoot down a freeway with a dog on a string while singing “Jah provide the bread,” but even though the human in me can see the difference, the mother in me cannot. The mother in me is forced to extrapolate everything into a Worst Case Scenario. And, when it comes to Clyde, I think I can argue that I have good reason.

When Clyde was a toddler he didn’t know how to swim; unfortunately, this didn’t stop him from jumping into the pool, where he would sink to the bottom like a piece of furniture, and remain there peacefully until an adult (usually one who was fully dressed and more than a little bit hysterical) would jump in and pull him out. At which point he would cough, sputter, laugh and then do it all over again. It was the best! Jump in, semi drown, get pulled out. Because that’s how things work, right? Someone is always there to pull you out—aren’t they? As a toddler it never occurred to him that the hysterical adult would not be there to fulfill their role, just as it now never occurs to him that his stand-mate at the concert might not fulfill theirs.

And that’s how I am so quick to make the connection between sheet music and slot canyons. Between Beethoven and broken down buses. And why, next time, I will be sure that Clyde has his music—as well as his shoes.

Sometimes I think that the worst thing you can do as a parent is watch the news. Why do we do it? I mean, it’s not like we need any help when it comes to imagining terrible things happening to our kids—one parent I know described it as “like having a horror movie playing constantly in your head.” And yet, despite the fact that our worrying is usually turned up to to eleven already, we watch the news and it’s like our worrying finds a whole new gear. There you are, minding your own business, worrying about the normal things parents worry about—things like maybe you somehow overlooked an abandoned well in your backyard, or that your child will be exposed to anthrax on their way home from school when—wham! —the news comes on and you find out that there are horrors you never even considered. Movie theaters. Marathons. Classrooms.

Yes, there’s no denying that the events of the last few weeks and months have made it rather difficult to be a parent. Whether it is happening in Aurora, or Newtown, or Boston, or even, most recently, Cleveland, the thought that random and senseless acts of violence could be directed at children—anybody’s children—can’t help but make all parents feel a terrible sort of sympathetic horror and helplessness.

I know I certainly have, which is why I have found myself turning once again to what, for me, is a constant source of strength and comfort: the Book. The Book that explains everything—good, evil, love, hate, fear, hope, betrayal, forgiveness—in a way that makes sense to both me and my children, and always has. And not only does it explain all of these things easily and well, it does so with such charm and humor that I don’t mind going back to it again and again, even when times are not troubled.

I am speaking, of course, of that greatest of all great books: Harry Potter. What, you thought I meant some other book? No: I prefer my fictional talking snakes without any extra misogyny and homophobia, thank you.

When people first learn that we are atheist parents, with potentially atheist children (I would no more believe I could decide my children’s level of religiosity for them than I could their sexuality), they are often curious as to how we approach things like the Boston Marathon bombing and the murders at Newtown. “But who (or what) do you turn to?” they ask. And I answer them: Harry Potter.

I’m not being facetious. And I’m sure I’m not alone. Just as I’m sure that other parents in the generations before me turned to Luke Skywalker, or Bilbo Baggins, or even King Arthur, there is something that is comforting about returning again and again to a character who chooses good over evil every single time. And if it happens to be a fictional character, well, so much the better, because fictional characters are the creations of ordinary men and women who dared to dream of a world where goodness was achievable. Where in the end, good always triumphs. No matter how many trials (or books) there are along the way.

Sometimes I think that that is all our children (or anyone else, for that matter) really needs: hope. That and the belief that there is more good than bad in the world. That for every crazy person intent on hurting people there are fifty more who are willing to put down their Big Macs and go help. (You know what I’m saying, bro?)

I realize that for some people the only place they can imagine finding such reassurance is in some kind of spirituality, complete with the promise of “better worlds to come,” but as for me, I think I’ll stick with Harry Potter. After all: with Harry Potter, you get dragons.

I’ve always been conflicted about how I should approach teaching my children about money: sometimes it seems like there’s an awfully fine line between teaching them the value of a dollar and teaching them to be fearful of imminent financial doom. On the one hand I want them to know that we, as a family, are okay: the wolves are not at the door. But on the other I really want them to understand why it is vitally important for them not to swing that brand new violin around like it is a baton: that just because I might be able to afford to replace it doesn’t mean that I want to.

Some kids seem to get this instinctively: there are always a few kids in every grade who seem to be born savers. They carefully hoard their birthday and Christmas money, and sometimes even any incidental cash they get from things like doing chores or selling lemonade, and the next thing you know they have saved up enough money to buy that new computer. Or car. Or even a boat to sail around the world. (No, seriously: I read a story about a woman who sailed solo around the world, and it said that she had bought her first boat with the money she had saved by skipping school lunch since she was nine years old. I’m sure her parents didn’t know if they should feel smug or appalled.)

Other kids (most kids) seem to be the exact opposite: for every born saver in this world I would guess that there are at least another ten born spenders. These are the kids for whom money is something that cannot be spent quickly enough, so much so that they aren’t really even bothered about what they spend it on. The purchase isn’t important; the act of purchasing is.

And then there’s the third kind, the ones who neither save or spend their money—they just lose it. If money can be said to burn a hole through the pockets of the second group, then you could say that in this group it burns a hole through everything: nothing is secure enough to keep this group’s money from vanishing into the ether. I am convinced that these kids are the source of most of the money you find lying on the ground. (That and people coming out of topless bars trying to stuff fistfuls of dollar bills into their pockets.)

So how can you influence what kind of a money person your child will become? Truthfully, I have no idea. Some people believe that you can create savers by enforcing certain saving “rules.” Rules such as splitting any money received (whether through work or by gift) into three piles, one for spending, one for saving, and one for charity. While I think this is a great idea I’m not entirely convinced that it would be enough to turn a would-be spender into a saver; I am more of the belief that this only works with the kids that would have been savers anyway. After all, they obviously already come from a family of savers, and more than anything else I think that the way you yourself treat money is what determines how your kids treat it. Just like with bigotry, what you tell your kids doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you do: if you are making your kids save half of everything they get, and yet you yourself are still living paycheck to paycheck, the only lesson they will believe is the one they see, not the one they hear.

Unless, of course, they happen to be born with the dream of sailing around the world—then you’re golden. But it’s probably not a good parenting strategy to count on something like that. At least not more than once.

Way back before our children were born, my husband and I spent two months in Thailand where we tried our best not to be obnoxious foreigners. Part of this effort involved things like not screaming at tuk-tuk drivers when they wanted to charge us an extra twenty cents to drive halfway across Bangkok, but the main thing we did to minimize our farang status was attempt to learn a tiny bit of the language.

With Thai that is easier said than done, because while things like verb tenses and prepositions are relatively easy in Thai (especially compared to English), the pronunciation is so difficult as to be almost impossible for Western trained ears. Not that the Thai people ever let on: they were so polite, and so appreciative of our pitiful attempts to speak their language that they encouraged us at every turn, and even put up with our childish delight when we managed to communicate simple requests like, “May I borrow a pen?” (Even when our version of “May I borrow a pen?” came out sounding more like “May I kiss your pig?”)

Actually, I’m pretty sure that it came out sounding like “May I kiss your pig?” most of the time, for the simple reason that Thai is a tonal language: changing the rising or falling inflection of a word can completely change its meaning. The most commonly used example of this is the Thai tongue twister “New wood doesn’t burn, does it?”, a phrase which sounds to most Western ears like “mai mai mai mai mai?”

As you might imagine, this caused us a great deal of confusion, and, as much as I enjoyed our time in Thailand, I was very grateful when we got back to an English-speaking country where I was able to understand what people were saying without having to bend my ears so hard around tone and inflection. Back to a land where, with the exception of a few regional variations, words all meant what I thought they meant, no matter how they were pronounced. And then, of course, I went and had children. And I might as well have never left Thailand.

Why? Because sulking, like Thai, is a tonal language. And there is as big a difference between “fine” and “fine” as there is between “mai” and “mai”—it all depends upon the inflection.

“How was your day?” I’ll ask my kids when they get home from school. The different answers (“fine” “fine” and “fine”) might, to the uninitiated, all sound the same, but to the practiced ear there is a world of difference.

“Fine” means that nothing very much happened: there is no gossip to report, no drama to relive. “Fine,” on the other hand, means that an important assignment was misplaced, a trusted friend was unkind, and they were soaked to the skin by an unexpected snowstorm. And heaven help you if the answer is “fine.” That means that you, as a parent, have failed them so greatly that it will take them a lifetime of therapy—maybe even two—to ever recover.

See the difference?

I know, neither do I—that’s the problem. When they were little I used to wish I had a “baby translator” so that I could finally understand what it was, exactly, that they wanted. Now that that they are older, however, I am starting to realize that those infant days were the high points of our communications. At least back then they seemed to think that it was worth their time to try to tell me what was wrong—even if I was too thick to understand.

Now I don’t even rate that. Or maybe I do: like I said, it’s hard to tell. Whatever. It’s fine.

It’s never a pleasant surprise to get a call from the school nurse. When that call comes not because your child has fallen off of the swing set or has thrown up in the hallway (the most primal fear of all for the elementary set), but rather because their odor has disrupted the class, well, that’s probably the least pleasant surprise of all. Especially when it happens for the second time.

The first time I got a call about my son, Clyde, smelling too nasty to attend class was when he was in kindergarten and a family of skunks had a domestic disturbance underneath our house. Or maybe it was a swinging skunk party. Either way, everyone in my family was woken up at three am by a smell so dreadful that after a few hours our noses all collectively checked out, and by the time school rolled around none of us could smell anything at all anymore, let alone each other.

A call later that morning from the school nurse told me, however, that the smell was still very apparent to the rest of the world. And, by the way, would I like to take home this pamphlet on “How to Keep a Clean House”? I’m sure she meant well. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be condescending and belittling. And I’m sure that, one day, the story of me standing in the hallway screaming a series of increasingly bizarre sleep-deprived profanities at her—until Clyde’s teacher gently led me outside—will just be another urban myth. Probably.

This most recent odor call, while a little different, was no less mortifying, because this time the odor in question came from Clyde himself. Or, at least, this time the odor was of his own making. You know the adage “a skunk can’t smell its own scent?” Well, as it turns out, it is also true that a boy can’t smell his own feet. That’s right: this time, the smell in question came from Clyde’s feet.

Clyde’s feet (or rather, his shoes) smelled so rank that he was sent to the school nurse (poor woman), who once again called me at home to let me know about the problem. Oh, and by the way, would I like to participate in this program they had for struggling families who couldn’t afford to buy their children new shoes?

Luckily it wasn’t the same nurse, and also luckily my many years of embarrassing incidents with Clyde between kindergarten and middle school had desensitized me quite a bit when it came to accusations of negligence, indigence, and general sloth, but despite being able to keep my temper this time, the feelings of mortification were still the same. Or, at least they were for me. Clyde reacted the exact same way he had in kindergarten: he was beaming with pride. “I smelled so bad I got sent home!” he said to me proudly, both times. It was like he had won an Oscar in Odor, or maybe a Grammy for Gaminess. Either way, he was as proud as could be—a fact that, this time, at least, I tried to get across to the school nurse, to no avail.

“I tried to tell him as gently as possible,” she said. “I didn’t want to embarrass him.”

“Please,” I replied. “Embarrass him. Humiliate him. Bring back the pillory and make an example out of him. Because getting the day off from school will definitely not get the right message across to him.”

I’m not sure she believed me. Of course, the (insincere) look of repentance on Clyde’s face wasn’t helping things. He was even starting to tear up. Or maybe it was just the smell that, in the small room, was starting to get to us all.

Huh. Maybe a skunk can smell his own scent after all.

Robert Frost once famously said that good fences make good neighbors, and while this is certainly true, I think that it would be much more accurate if he had also added, “and even better siblings.” Because there is nothing that makes the sibling relationship more bearable than a door that closes between them. And when I say bearable, I of course mean bearable for the rest of us: my children might be shut away inside their own rooms privately wallowing in misery and despair, but as long as they are not making each other miserable and despairing (and as long as their misery and despair is of the quieter sort), I am okay with that.

Some people might disagree, and say that, on the contrary, keeping your misery locked up behind a closed door is exactly the sort of behavior that contributes to developing one of those damaged psyches that keeps their feelings bottled up inside to fester and burn for the rest of their lives. The fact that some people think that this is a bad thing tells me that some people have probably never driven across the country with two children who despise each other. And they have most definitely never shared a hotel room with them.

Please understand that I still firmly believe that giving your child a sibling (or two) is by far the best method there is for socializing them, and especially for teaching them how to handle unpleasant, annoying, and frequently, downright psychotic people. There really is no other method quite so effective. Heck, even professional torturers must experience pangs of guilt and self-doubt every now and then, causing them to let up on their victims—these are emotions that are entirely unknown to your average older sister So, yeah, I believe that having siblings is necessary. However, as necessary as it may be, that still doesn’t mean that I want to experience all of that socialization first hand. After all, I already did my sibling time when I was growing up; I’ve been (somewhat) socialized. And that is why when we travel I always insist on getting accommodations with a door that closes somewhere in the middle.

I have no other requirements. Cockroaches are fine, bed bugs are tolerable, ancient burial grounds inches below our feet are not a problem. I wouldn’t even mind if Norman Bates himself checked us in, bloody knife in hand. Is there a door separating the room into two different spaces? Then I’m fine.

In fact, if I had my way we would arrive at the hotel in two different cars, sit at two different tables in the restaurant (or better yet, two different restaurants), and maybe even vacation in two different towns. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy spending time with my children, and I’m sure that (sometimes) they enjoy spending time with me. Being together with them is a good thing. It’s just that, on a vacation, it’s hard not to have the phrase “too much of a good thing” circling through your head constantly.

This summer we are going on a two week trip through the canyon, and I have to admit that the part that makes me the most nervous is the fact that the Grand Canyon is notoriously bereft of doors that shut. I know, I know: it’s a big place. My question is whether or not it will be big enough to separate two warring siblings. And yeah, I know that we would not be the first party to be at each other’s throats down there, but unlike some of the others that didn’t get along so well, I would actually like for my entire party to make it out alive.

Or, barring that, I would at least like to be able to make it out with a tiny shred of my sanity.

During this past spring break my family and I got to stay at a hotel that offered a bocce court. For those of you who don’t know, bocce is a game that is kind of like horseshoes, but instead of throwing horseshoes at a stake in the ground, with bocce you throw different sized and colored balls at each other, the object being to throw the larger colored balls down the court as close to the smaller white ball as possible. Or, if you are a boy, the object being to use the biggest, bluest balls as props in a series of obscene pantomimes.

Actually, I use the term “boy” loosely, since this was a game that was apparently started by my husband, someone who is several decades beyond his boyhood. But it was also a game that was enthusiastically received by my son, Clyde, who at eleven still has years and years of boyhood in front of him. Or, if my husband is any indication, decades and decades.

Watching them together on the bocce court (they did get around to playing—eventually) made me glad once again that there are two of these “boy people” in my family, because, really, if there was only one I think that he would drive me absolutely crazy. Or, at the very least, crazier.

For whatever reason (maybe my girlness), I’m just not cut out to handle boydom on my own. While I often think that some of the crude and obnoxious things they do are funny—hey, I liked Beavis and Butthead, too—unlike them, I have my limits: my amusement (and tolerance) begins to wear thin after the third time someone sneaks up on my while I am lying on the couch and farts in my face, not to mention the thirtieth time. And there are only so many times (okay, one) that I can listen to the Southpark Christmas Album before I declare it verboten. And as for Family Guy—well, I think everyone knows by now that my tolerance for that dried up a long, long time ago.

And that’s why I am so very grateful there is another boy in the house to pick up my slack. Grateful that there is another boy in the house who is not only willing but excited to go see the new Three Stooges movie. Another boy in the house who can understand that clearly the new Call of Duty game is completely different from the last six, and needs to be pre-ordered today. Another boy in the house who knows that there is no such thing as too much pizza.

My husband once explained the connection that boys have with each other by telling me that the only person in the world who can stand to be around an eleven year old boy is another eleven year old boy; that, he said, is why the friends you make at that age can remain your friends for years, even after the point when all seemingly rational people would have abandoned the friendship. (Like, for instance, the fifth time your friend’s antics get you arrested.)

I’m not saying that girls, and their friendships, aren’t just as irrational sometimes, and aren’t just as intense. And I’m also not saying that girls friendships, and relationships, don’t have their annoying features that can easily get on an outside viewer’s last nerve: they do. Anyone who has ever been within hearing distance of a multi-girl sleepover can attest to that (if they manage to hang on to their hearing after the first few high pitched giggle screams, that is).

But, I have to admit that there is something that is special about the relationship boys have—if special is the right word for something that is seemingly based on trying to punch each other in the testicles over and over again.