Another weekend gone….
And no, I don’t know where it went!
Sean turned 13 on Saturday. What a day! Turning 13 and the world possibly ending – two momentous occasions crammed into one 24-hour period.
Or so we thought….
As usual, Sean had gymnastics practice in the morning. I was exhausted and not-so-secretly hoped that Sean was sleeping in on his birthday. The sound of Cheerios hitting the bowl let me know that he wasn’t.
Groan….
I’m a little foggy on the details but I think I owe Rich $10 for getting out of bed and driving Sean to the gym.
Rich even ran some errands and brought home bagels. Bonus!!!
After Sean arrived home from practice (again, thanks to Rich… I could be up to $20 now), we watched the minutes tick by and allowed him to open his present at exactly 10:21 am.
The time is significant for two reasons…. First, that is the moment he was born. And second, if the world was going to end at 6pm EST, then we at least wanted Sean to get some playtime in.
Sean was eager to open the skillfully wrapped-in-the-day’s-sports-section gift. Could the box contain the coveted Blitzkrieg 2 videogame that he had researched and decided upon to be the gift of the year months ago?
Ahhhhh, that would be a “no”….
Sort of.
Instead, it was a shiatsu neck massager with heat! Woo Hoo!!!
Not exactly on the top of any 13 year-olds’ must-have list but invaluable to a family that is plagued with daily pleas to rub one’s neck.
We must have trained him well to deal with disappointment. Sean took one look and said “Geez, thanks.”
Good job, kid.
We let him stew for about ten minutes and then we directed Sean to open the box so we could plug the massager in and check it out.
The look of puzzlement as he opened the box to reveal a package of beef jerky was priceless.
“What?”
Then the smile crossed his face and he knew he had been duped.
Yes, there indeed was a shiatsu massager in the box, as well as two packages of beef jerky, the entire series of Ed, Edd & Eddy on DVD, a videogame that I can’t recall the name of, and, of course, Blitzkrieg 2.
Sean was shocked and one very happy 13 year-old.
Now, as you might expect, the pleasant mood did not continue for the rest of the day.
Even though it was just the two grandmas, people came over. And going out for the bike that one grandma bought? Well, that was ‘going somewhere’ on a day when Sean simply wanted to park himself in front of the computer screen and go nowhere.
He was off. He was grumpy. And, if you didn’t know his tone, he was rude.
But it was Sean’s day and we needed to give him some slack. As his parents, it was not only our job to make this day special for him, but also to get him through.
And get him through we did.
As the clock passed midnight and Sean finally fell into an exhausted sleep, we were all happy to have, in the end, a very successful day.
We survived.
In fact, the whole world did….
A day to celebrate indeed!
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