We had our boy after six daughters.
And then God laughed.
“Be careful,” people said.
“Don’t spoil him,” they warned.
“Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance,” they chortled.
“He’ll be so coddled,” they agreed.
There was an assumption that six big sisters and his mama would baby him so much he would always be a mama’s boy, and on the wimpy side.
I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s all that different,” I said, “raising boys and girls.”
And then God had a right good belly laugh.
He’s not so much a mama’s boy as a Lady’s Man.
It’s so different that I never, ever, not even once, had to tell any of my daughters that in this family we do not commit felonies.
Nor have I ever had to suggest to the girls that popping wheelies in their sister’s wheelchair while on a gravel driveway is not the wisest choice of activities. He popped a wheelie so hard that he flipped out of the chair while it was moving. He landed on his back, and slid along in the gravel leaving most of the skin from 3 of his vertebrae in the dust behind him. Then he went on to spend the night with a friend, headed up to spend the following day at the lake and the dunes, returned home and mowed Granny Tea’s lawn at dusk, and then came to show me. After all that fun, sun, and sweat, the skin around the scrapes was red and inflamed and they were pretty ugly.
“Yeah, the other guys at the Lake kept telling me they though it was getting infected and should be treated,” he said as I poured peroxide down his cuts.
“Does that sting?” I asked, as the peroxide bubbled madly.
“No. I can’t even feel it, really.”
I think he’d been ignoring the pain for so long his body just quite paying attention. He described how he’d gotten the injuries.
“Were you embarrassed?” I asked, as I bandaged him up (he would do that himself, but it’s dead center of his back and hard to see/reach well).
“Nah,” he said. “The other kids tried to do wheelies and they couldn’t even get the chair up. I did better wheelies than any of them.”
“What’s a few chunks of missing skin so long as nobody bested you in your attempt at a spinal injury?” I asked.
“Duh,” he said.