A Twist of Things to Come

I'm not sure exactly how this happened. Let me explain. I grew up in a very female-dominant family. Not that my dad was a wimp -- far from it. He was once a sergeant in the Army, who could bluster and give orders with the best of them, but he was also a bit Asperger-y, and relied a lot on my mother to manage things. He loved us, we loved him. He was brilliant. He was also largely irrelevant to the social fabric of the family. Mom did everything -- she ran the place -- and she was the perfect counterpoint to my father's social impairment.

Folks were simply drawn to her. My older brother had several girlfriends who called her "mom" and would still visit long after he had broken up with them. Made for some fun evenings, let me tell you.

In any case, I always assumed that one day I'd have daughters, and teach them to value their brains and to believe there were no limits on their dreams, just as my mother had for my sister and me. When I learned I was having a boy that first time, I freaked. What the hell was I going to do with a boy baby? I'd done a lot of babysitting in my teens, but almost exclusively to girls. I read them the Chronicles of Narnia, taught them to draw, showed them how to find nice straight sticks and make scrolls with their computer paper. Girls were great.

Well, years later I have two boys, and I realize now I needn't have worried. One of the little-publicized joys of passing on one's DNA is realizing how much your have in common with your little monsters, whether or not they have a Y chromosome.

Wee Boy's friend from down the street stayed over again last night (the second time in three days), and his older brother has started coming over with him. They get with my boys and play games, watch viral videos and do what Wee Boy calls "playing Imagination." The latter involves lots of their martial arts equipment, about 12 Nerf guns, and teams of zombies and survivors (or, recently, an interesting mashup of the Naruto universe and Shadow of the Colossus). It also means a lot of running in and out of the house, screaming things like, "He's infected!" and "You can't do that! My Zero Suit is impenetrable!"

It happens every summer. Boys materialize on my lawn at dawn, and the fun begins. I try to keep them hydrated with KoolAid or the occasional SnoCone. I buy a bag of icepops, and in two days the boys and their gang of friends have left only the orange and yellow ones to decorate the inside of the freezer. I refuse to buy more until those are gone, which draws out the process for weeks. I end up making Koolaid pops, like I did last night.

The point is, my house has become a magnet for little boys, and I've realized that boys are great. And what could be more challenging in this world than to raise young men to be smart and compassionate, to use their strength to stand up for the weak?

Plus, I get to read their manga when they're done. ;)

Sorry for the spam, but I forgot to promote the two latest awesome posts at GeekaChicas.

First, there was Beatrice Blythe/narniadear's A first look into Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland', which looks both freaky and deserving of SQUEE.

Then this morning we have A Nonny Mouse/jedi_diplomat's Passwords, Fiber and the City Of Bozeman, which makes glorious use of our new WTF? tag.

And I got my comeuppance for getting all full of myself last night, because, despite checking things more than once in the preview window, I still missed a typo in one of the tags that farked the whole post up. What can I say? It was late and my house was being attacked little boy shaped zombies. *shrug*

So if you're interested in an intelligible version, take a look at I believe the technical term is OMFG.