Dave Meurer - Boys Will Be Joys

2002 by David Meurer

Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com

New Spire edition published 2011

Previously published under the title You Can Childproof Your Home, but Theyll Still Get In.

Ebook edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-3422-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Scripture marked NIV is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

For Dad

Acknowledgments

I tip my hat to the usual cast of characters who put up with me through the process of creating this book:

Dale, my lovely, patient, and periodically embarrassed bride.

My sons, Mark and Brad, who each kept saying, Write about HIM instead of ME! In an effort to be fair, I took the advice of both (and got twice the material).

Mom and Dad, who let me tell tales (many of which are true) about them.

Steve Laube, my editor, who keeps risking his professional reputation by agreeing to publish my stuff. He really owes me for changing my deadline.

Chip MacGregor, who is not ashamed to be called my agent. I suspect a concussion.

Elizabeth, Holly, Alex, Jeanne, Alison, Donna, and all the Bethany House folks who put up with waaaaaay more than they deserve, and who only rarely threaten my bodily person.

The many friends who cheer me on, especially the Memphis troop.

Contents

Introduction

Child development professionals categorize children into two main groups:

(A) Naturally compliant, obedient, well-mannered children

(B) Yours

The implication is rather obvious. If you are blessed with naturally compliant, obedient, well-mannered children, they were accidentally switched at the hospital. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. In a sense, you could look at it as though you won the lottery, and someone else even bought your ticket for you.

Most parents, however, end up with their own children. But dont panic quite yet. Bringing your own children home from the hospital doesnt mean they are destined to be incompliant, disobedient, and ill-mannered, but it does mean that you have to devote massive amounts of time and energy to avoid that outcome. Left to themselves, your children have a natural propensity to be self-centered, pugnacious, and ill-tempered and, if they are boys, wear oversized trousers with enough denim to fashion a Coleman tent.

This book is for all the parents who ended up with their own kids. It is not a professional parenting manual, as I am not a professional. I am just a dad. But I hope that you will find some insight and some helpful tips in my observations, reflections, ruminations, grousings, mutterings, stunned exclamations, incredulous questions, inane outbursts, bulging neck arteries, apologies, failures, and occasional successes.

Remember When You Used to Have Dignity?

You are standing in the grocery store checkout line, and right smack behind you stands an enormous biker dude whose vast muscular girth, covered with scary tattoos, is squeezed tightly into a black leather vest. A large gold hoop pierces his right earlobe, a tight red bandana covers his shaved head, and he is pushing a cart full of beverages that would never be served at the annual church potluck.

No one dares make eye contact with him.

No one breathes a word to him.

No one... except your three-year-old son, who is sitting in your shopping cart and staring in slack-jawed wonder at the sight.

You are praying, very hard , that the same angels who stopped the mouths of the lions in the book of Daniel will rapidly intervene before your kid does the thing that, deep down, you know he is going to do unless a miracle happens.

The angels are apparently busy elsewhere, because your son drops his box of animal crackers, slowly points his cookie-smeared finger at the biker dude, and squeals, Dad! Looooooooooooooook! A pirate!

You are chuckling nervously and fumbling with your wallet, when your son, wrinkling his nose at the pungent scent of cigarette smoke and motor oil emanating from the shopper, announces, Dad! That pirate needs a bath!

You are now hurling random wads of cash at the checker, because your short-term goal in life at this point is to get out of that store while your spleen is still in your body.

You scoot your cart into the exit aisle and prepare to make a run for it. Before you get six feet away, your son breaks into a rousing chorus of Yo, ho! Yo, ho! A pirates life for me! (A song that you taught him.)

All of the other shoppers who would normally be bellowing involuntary guffaws of merriment are instead biting their lips, or chewing their knuckles, or stuffing an entire eggplant in their cheeks anything to keep from emitting a single giggle.

You sprint, careening your cart toward the parking lot, never looking back.

What do we learn from this experience? Well, we learn that it is unsafe to ever take your young child out into situations where he can possibly come into contact with other human beings, because he will inevitably do something to humiliate you to the point that all your internal organs go into violent spasms and you can only manage to gasp Im sorry to the assorted strangers to whom he has just announced Watch this as he proudly shoves his entire index finger up his nose.

One mom told me about a similar experience in a store when she had her young daughter in tow. Both mom and child saw the same shopper at almost the same moment when they rounded a corner into the cereal section.

The sixty-something shopper, probably a very nice grandmother and all-around great American citizen, just so happened to bear an astonishing resemblance to a nasty character in a very popular childrens cartoon about a mermaid.

But while the mom was thinking to herself, Goodness! With that deep purple mascara and silver hair, she looks almost exactly like...

THE WITCH!!!!! screamed the daughter, clutching her moms arm for dear life. RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!

I just wanted to crawl into a hole, recalled the mom ruefully.

You used to have class. Now you have kids. Get used to it.

Dale had our first son, Mark, with her in the store one day when he, then three, was struck with a realization that to him was way more important than Einsteins finally figuring out that E = MC2. Earlier in the day, while still at home, Mark realized that he did not know the term for an interesting feature of his body.

Whats this called? he asked Dale as he pointed to the relevant sector of himself.

So Dale told him.

Pause for several hours, while his little mind processes this information .

Later in the day Dale and Mark were in the grocery check-out line, when Marks furiously firing neurons finally assimilated and organized the aforementioned information and he came to a logical and, to him, thrilling conclusion:

I have this interesting body feature .

I am like Daddy, but just a smaller version .