Boys

A few days ago, Andrew and I bribed our three year-old halfway through dinner: When he finished, we'd go to the splash park.

Approximately three seconds later, his plate was clean.

So off we went, with Andrew and the boys dressed to splash and me dressed to watch. As we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a group of boys sitting on and standing around one of the benches near the splash pad. They were older boys ( I figured the oldest was twelve or thirteen, the youngest eight or nine), but I thought, "Good. G will have kids to play with." But then I opened the door and my ears were assaulted. F word here, N word there, S word over yonder. I sighed and prayed G wouldn't learn any new words from these kids.

And when I say I prayed, I don't mean it in the modern-day-hope-really-hard-and-use-"Jesus"-as-a-swear-word sense. I mean it for realz.

And I wondered how or if I'd keep myself from tsking at these boys, admonishing them to speak more quietly or change their language. Maybe both?

In the end, I did neither. I sat and prayed and watched my men at play. Eventually, the boys did quiet down, soften their language ever-so-slightly, and join in the water play. The one I figured was the oldest even grinned and such at Rhysiepoo. He turned to me and asked if that was my baby, my husband. My make-LU-proud-I -graduated-from-there-with-an-English-degree-answer: Mmmhmm.

And I rag on my husband for being guttural and monosyllabic. (His people did invent the language, after all...)

But being the thinker that I am, I spend much of my time on that bench wondering what G would be like as a school-age-child. Will he toss swear words around to sound like the other kids on the playground? Will he gesture rudely so other boys his age don't call him names, so he can prove he's heterosexual, Black, American, normal? What will be required of him in order to fit in with the tribe of boys he sits in school with day-in and day-out?

Maybe Micah 6:8 should be the first verse I work to help him memorize.