A Fly in My Hair, Les Paul, and the Fall of Constantinople: Midsummer Musings by an 11-year-old

Our younger son, now a few months shy of 12, was born after 20 minutes of hard, unmedicated labor, with Pitocin rushing through me and no time for an epidural. I was swearing like the world's worst sailor. He came out so fast that for the first few days his head was purple and the rest of his body looked like he'd spent too much time at the beach without sunscreen. (In fact, our then-three-year-old asked me 'Why isn't the baby's skin white like ours?")

Anywho, it felt like he just couldn't wait to be born, to start tasting everything this great world has to offer. He never crawled. He walked at nine months, and by the time he had his first birthday was running so fast I could not catch up to him. Irrepressible. Ebullient. That's this boy.

Sometimes, I feel like he got the wrong mom. How did he end up in a family of mulling introverts? Then again, maybe God put him in our lives to teach us what unmitigated joy looks like.


My love for him knows no bound. Sometimes I can't keep up with the energy. I do like to talk, but I need big swatches of silence and solitude. What follows is a transcript I took of his comments to me over lunch in our kitchen. It was either type away, or fly off the handle.

Here goes. I don't guarantee the order of these remarks; I just kept typing. All I did to start the conversation by saying over our steak and eggs lunch: "Guess what I am going to say?"

"That you love me." he answered. 

I nodded. 

"Now, guess what I am going to say?" 

"I don't know. What?" 

"Mom, there is a fly in your hair." And so it went, through lunch and into the family room and onto the sofa, where he cuddled with the puppy.

"If Adam and Eve both had brown and red hair, how was there genetic material to create blond hair?" 

"Did you know the Les Paul guitar was designed in New Jersey and that in Newark, it's illegal to buy ice cream after six o'clock unless you have a doctor's note?
From a street vendor."

"One thousand five hundred years ago, St. Patrick started 
converting Irish men and women to Catholicism."

"Did you know New Jersey was one of the seven colonies that initially said No to the proposal of a revolution? 
I got this from the movie 1776 and that John Adams documentary."

"Did you know the answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg can be found in the Bible? Since God created all things at once, he created chickens first." 

"What was the last city held by the Roman Empire? Constantinople. But I bet you didn't know that."

 
‎"Did you know that New Jersey native Frank Sinatra was originally cast to play Dirty Harry in the movie Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood but he broke a finger two weeks before shooting? "

"Can I go on the computer now?"