I Give You the Future President Of The United States

The Boy is six foot four inches tall and growing so fast, groceries evaporate. A jug of milk barely takes a bounce and – poof! – it is gone. If one meatloaf was good when he was a little kid, three is good now, if you want any leftovers. Even broccoli is inhaled with yummy noises and requests for more. I am finding that if I don’t make a plate for myself and literally hide it, I would starve in the wake of his laser-like focus on what’s munch-able.

Am I complaining? No. I grocery shop with the single-mindedness of a pillaging Viking shore party, and then stand back and smile like Buddha when he stokes his engine with fuel. The Boy is turning into a superior man who actually accomplishes lofty things like making straight A’s in a Law Magnet high school. He’s an Eagle Scout, for real. He’s pursuing an appointment to the United State Naval Academy where he wants to serve his Country by flying or engineering or even by practicing law.

He guards his popular blonde social-butterfly soccer-star sister from an ever-present posse of hormonally-charged pubescent horny boys. One piercing glance of disapproval (I call it the Angry Eagle) from him and the little bastards scatter like so many cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on. But what totally taps his physical energy like nothing else?

He rows. His sport is called Crew. Into a long needle-nosed scull, he loads his lanky muscular frame, bravely clad in a stretchy “unisuit” that leaves very little to the imagination as to the contours of his, ahem, package. On the flip side, he closes his eyes and smiles when I ask him why he enjoys Crew so much and says, “Girls in spandex. Need I say more?”

With three to seven other young men, and encouraged into a winning rhythm by a coxswain, they pull together jetting down the race course. They split the water like a stiletto knife, no maybe more like a scalpel, leaving hardly a wake or hole in the water where their oar blades dip in and displace their swirling liquid medium.

So you see? I have won the Kid Lottery. He’s got his priorities straight. And I feed him whatever he needs whether it is meatloaf or love, he gets it with seconds and thirds if he wants it.

Next: The Boy and I Get Meningitis in a Headlock!