Moose

After lunching with Richmond Friday, it is becoming apparent that I simply MUST blog about Younger Son's friend.

We will call this boy... Moose.

Moose is in fourth grade and roughly the size of a line backer. Give or take.

Younger Son has been best friends with Moose since their first day in Kindergarten.
They play every recess together.
They're in chess club together.
We go to the same church as Moose's family.

Moose is like American Express; he's everywhere we want to be.

We like Moose.
Moose is a decent enough kid.
But Moose doesn't realize how huge he is.
And doesn't seem to realize that there are other kids in the world who don't play tackle football.
And that not everyone is a boy.

We've had to remind Moose several times to stop picking up our son.
And to stop squeezing him.

When Younger Son turned age 7 two years ago, we let him invite a handful of friends over for a small birthday party.
This was the same year the husband sweated and toiled constructing a gigantic play tower in our back yard. Imagine a tree house without a tree. Basically, a small backyard deck... six feet up in the air. You can pitch a four-man tent on it. We are very proud of our play tower. The husband and I climb up there sometimes just to get away from the children.

Anyway...

Birthday boy put together a short guest list of his best buddies which included Moose.
And one girl.
One girl?
Yeah, she's neat.
Um. Can I invite Richmond's girls too, just so this one girl won't feel like the only girl?
Okay.

Whew.

(I drag Richmond into this story only to show how great she is that she's still my friend.)

Party day comes.
Set children loose in backyard with toys and play tower.
Hide in house with Richmond and the husband.

Too soon, children start flowing into the house looking for entertainment.
So much for the fabulous new play tower.

Play games.
Eat cake.
Open presents.
Shoo everyone home.

Again, whew!

But later...

Richmond calls.
Hey. I didn't wanna call, but I thought you'd wanna know.
Uh oh. What?

On their way home from our house, Rich's lovely daughters enlighten her as to what had happened outside while the parents were hiding indoors.
Apparently, as all the children were playing and climbing and enjoying the play tower, Moose needed to relieve himself and determined that the walk to the indoor bathroom was just too far to travel.
So, he decided to see how far he could... um... shoot from the tower.
Which didn't go over well with our female guests.
Although I'm sure the other boys were highly amused.

But that explains why the outdoor party broke up so soon.
Everyone was afraid to walk anywhere.

Richmond rightly thought I'd wanna know in case we ever wanted to invite Moose over again.

Yeah.

(To Moose's parents' credit... when I mentioned the incident to Moose's mom the next day, she was horrified. She then slapped herself in the forehead and explained to me that she and her hubby are raising their small herd of boy-children way out in the boonies (farm country), and because boys will be boys, and to avoid having dozens of boy-feet tracking mud throughout the house, they have designated a "pee tree" in the yard where it is agreed that it's okay to "go" without asking permission... being as how there aren't any neighbors within binocular distance, and poor mom is the only female... anywhere... and she's seen it all before, and then some.)

That was two years ago.
We still have Moose over now and then, but never when girls are present.