#121. or, Do you have something on your cheek?

  Our Little son has a tendency to talk a bit of smack.

  He has flair for the dramatic, and quite the imagination, both of which I have no idea whatsoever, whose genes that came from. My suspicions, however, lean a bit more toward the parent who spends a good deal of time in a tractor......I'm not mentioning any names though.

  Really, the blame doesn't land entirely on his shoulders. He's spent his whole life watching his two older brothers fight like cats and dogs. It only stands to reason that some of the wonderfully, intellectual insults, hurled between two teenage boys, were going to be absorbed into his brain through osmosis. And trust me, he was like a sponge! He soaked up everything. I hope that his brothers realize the monster that they've created here, and I'm certain that they do, because for the most part, his inappropriate jabs are directed at the two of them.

  So, his mouth tends to get him into a bit of trouble now and then. Occasionally, my wife or myself will  have to tell him to tone it down a bit. Sometimes though, we leave him to suffer the consequences of his actions after he's pushed one too many buttons on one of his brothers.

  Oldest son will generally just ask him to stop. But if Little son continues to poke at him with a stick, he'll get growled at, and that seems to usually be enough to calm the playing field. Hostilities don't usually escalate between those two. It's sort of like a banana republic threatening a super power nation. You would be foolish to test their resolve.

  The dynamic with Middle son is a little different. Little son will push until Middle son snaps and does something like jamming one of his dirty work boot socks into Little son's mouth to try shut him up. A couple weeks ago, he hauled Little son outside and tossed into the pool. Being early fall, it was well past the time to take the pool down for the year and the water was pretty cool. He looked like a drowned cat standing at the door wanting to get back in, but we made him take off all of his wet clothes outside before he was allowed in.

  Yesterday at breakfast, the topic of Little son's swirly came up. Now, in case you've been living under a rock since say....the 50's, a swirly is when somebody larger than you holds your head, upside down in the toilet and flushes it. Usually to punish you for some ill deed, but sometimes just because you had to wear tape on your glasses or had the hem of your pants half way between your ankles and knees. Really, I think the advent of the flush toilet facilitated the swirly, because having to manually rotate your victim while his head was in the crapper, must have been a colossal pain in the ass.

  Anyways, I had been unaware of any swirly's handed out in our house.

  A couple weeks back, it was discovered that we had a bastard mouse take up residence in our basement. That event, expedited the complete clean-up of the basement where the two older boys live. It also required a team effort between all the boys and my wife to get the job done. A lot of things came out and went to the dump. Anything useful that we didn't need any more got sent to donations.

  My wife explained that, Little son was being his usual self, and being a bit of a pain in the ass while the clean up was going on. Eventually, the two older boys decided that enough was enough and hauled Little son upstairs to the toilet where I do my business and give him a swirly. For some reason that made it worse, but I'm not really so sure why? As she was telling me about this, Little son sat across the table looking rather annoyed, yet sheepish that this event took place. Apparently, he took a 30 minute shower afterwards just in case there was any spackle stuck to the side of his head. I hope he learned a bit of humility.

   Later, I was talking to my wife about this, and asked her what she had been doing while the swirly was being applied. It seems, Little son is very wirey and it took both of his brothers to hold him in place to keep him from escaping...........

    ...................somebody had to flush the toilet!





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