Coming in to this post a little grumpy. I just got into one of those parent-child standoffs with Lil' S1, where, as the parent, you don't even really care about the thing you are standing off over, but you've already said no, repeatedly, so if you back down, it would signify great weakness on your part, and your child would never respect you ever again... or at least that's how it feels in the heat of the moment.
Here's what happened this time. It was about 9:25 pm, right around the time everybody goes to sleep in our house but me. Usually I'll let Lil' S1 stay up a little later and read in bed, but not too late, because he has to wake up pretty early for school now. So, I told him he could read until 9:35, but he had to watch the time himself and turn out the lights and go to sleep on his own. (No pulling the "you didn't tell me..." stunt when I come to see why the lights are still on a half-hour later.) He agreed but said he had to find his phone first to see the time. I told him I'd ping it, but he said it wouldn't work because it's dead.
This really annoyed me. It's one thing to misplace your phone -- it happens frequently to almost everybody with a phone -- but letting die is another thing. There's no reason your phone should die in your house within ten yards of a charger. He was just lazy and didn't want to get up to charge it when he noticed it was low on power. I've told him many times: Charge your phone; you have it for emergencies, and it won't do you any good if it's dead. But of course he's only 11, so messages from his nagging father don't always sink it.
Anyway, now, instead of something that should take fifteen seconds -- pinging your phone and grabbing it -- takes fifteen minutes. We search all over the house for it. S wakes up because she hears the commotion, and now she's super annoyed. (For some reason, I always bear the brunt of her annoyance in such a situation instead of the person who actually caused the whole kerufffle in the first place.) We're all looking peevishly, and finally he finds it between some cushions. Good.
It's about 9:45 at this point, and he plugs in his phone, gets in bed, and starts reading. I let it go until 9:50 and then tell him it's light out. He asks for ten more minutes. I say no. He asks for five more. I say no. He asks for three more. I say no. Part of it is that I'm still annoyed; part of it is that it's just time for him to go bed; part of it is that not getting to read as late as you want feels like a good low stakes consequence for letting your phone die and then losing it. But he just won't let it go, and he keeps pushing and pushing and pushing until I'm threatening to take away his Nintendo.* S gets up again and comes in (she's more on my side this time), and it's another three minutes of protestation until he half-relents, and we turn off his lights and leave.
So, it's over and done with now, but it's like... why? I'm mean I know why -- he's 11 -- but still.
*He just bought a 3DS for some reason. He already has a Switch and a PS5. I almost forbade him from getting another video game system. But he had birthday money from his grandparents, and that's what he wanted to spend it on, so... whatever.
By the way, I don't want to give the wrong impression on this blog. Last week I wrote about another annoying incident with Lil' S1, but I don't want you to think that we have some sort of persistent problem with him. We don't. He's a great kid overall, and he seems to be really thriving at his new school. It just so happens that, in each case, at the moment I sat down to crank out an entry that's what was on my mind. If I was writing this tomorrow, there's a good chance I wouldn't have even mentioned anything about Lil' S1's lost phone, because I probably (hopefully) won't even be thinking about it tomorrow.
That's the thing about this blog. It's about my life, in so much as my life can be accurately captured by the thing that I'd thinking at the moment I happen to have an hour of spare time to write. So, it's probably only about a little bit of my life. But I guess that's fine.
Alright it's late here, so let's hit a few bullets and call it a post.
- I went to a birthday party last night for a trivia buddy. It was a surprise party, in which the honoree was actually surprised. I don't think I've ever been to such a party before. At every surprise party I've been to before, they're always like I knew something was up.
- Speaking of parties, we are throwing one for Lil' S2 tomorrow since we spent his actual birthday this year recovering from our harrowing trip to Maui. It's at Dave & Buster's, and god I hate that place. I so wanted him to chose a different venue, but all his friends had parties there, and often when you're that age you just want to do what your friends did.
- My neck is super sore. They started up wrestling class again at my Krav Maga gym, so I went on Wednesday, and I worked muscles I typically don't work. It's a common joke among the "older" folk at my gym to say, "I'm too old for this shit." But, for the first time in my life, I'm actually starting to feel that way. Even just a few years ago, I was super excited for wrestling class and smoking fools on the mat, and it's now like: Ugh... am I really going to roll around for an hour in physical combat with somebody 15 years younger than me? The answer is still yes, but it's a much less enthusiastic yes than before.
- We've been watching The Bear. I really like it. S really doesn't like it. I think we're at the point where we just have to shake hands, say we tried, and go our separate ways on this one. It's for the best. I can watch it one my own schedule, and S can fast-forward to the end, so that she knows what happens without actually having to watch it.
- We've had deer hanging out in our yard the past few Saturday mornings (maybe other mornings, too; we don't really look during the week). I wonder if they'll be back tomorrow.
Until next time...
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