At Least They'll Fit In With The Other Diesel Mechanics

It has come to my attention that the Bird boys lack certain fundamental hygiene skills.

It's nothing I smell -- we undoubtedly consume more Speed Stick per capita than most households in Fox Valley. I'll never need air freshener as long as Billy and Ben and their manly-yet-fresh aromas are around.

No, the clues are more subtle than mere B.O.

The first came a couple of years ago, when Billy began to develop acne. When I bought him special cleanser, he couldn't seem to get the hang of what he was supposed to do with it. That's when I learned that he didn't actually wash his face. He just let the shower run over it and called it clean.

(Perhaps this misunderstanding of product usage is genetic. Years ago my mother and I ascertained after exhaustive investigation that the reason my father's hair always looked peculiar was that he thought cream rinse was to be used to rinse shampoo out of hair. The man was wearing a 20-year accumulation of Tame and Prell.)

Then there was Ben's hair. He's got more of it than the other three of us put together, and I began to notice that about two-thirds of it wasn't wet when he finished shampooing. It turns out that he was only washing the top of his head, not the sides. We've repeatedly discussed the fact that all of it gets dirty, but I haven't seen much improvement.

The boys' hygiene is weighing heavy on my mind this week, as they dress rehearse for their roles in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Ben is PigPen, which means the girls in the cast take great delight in smearing his face, neck, hands, and arms with all manner of brown cosmetics to make him look appropriately filthy. (Boys who won't do theatre because you have to wear makeup are missing a vital point: it's the girls in the cast who know how to apply it. You don't see football players sitting there being rubbed on by several girls, at least not while they're actually playing football.) He's arrived home each of the last several nights a complete mess.

The problem is that when he comes down to breakfast the next morning, he's still a complete mess. Twice I've had to grab a washcloth and start scrubbing to get the "dirt" off his arms and neck. He seems to think this is much ado about nothing.

Bob and I have done our best to coach on these things, but I fear we've waited too late. Only a couple of neat-freak girlfriends can save our boys now.

I wish I'd been as smart as that clever Anne Glamore, who writes Tales From My Tiny Kingdom. Earlier this week Anne pulled on her bathing suit, instructed a particularly grimy young son to don his, and took him into the shower for a body washing workshop. (Here, read for yourself. She and her brood are ever so entertaining.)

Unfortunately, 17-year-old Billy and 14-year-old Ben are way too old for us to legally teach them the same way.

No Woman is an Island, Unless She Lives in a House Full of Men

Today was quite obviously garbage day in our little corner of Fox Valley as I drove Ben to his job bagging groceries. (Fortunately for us, he's not relying on family money is his schemes to be filthy rich.) Cans lined the curbs, and because it was the first pickup since Christmas, many people had piled extra bags alongside. One yard had so many bags they were spilling out into the street. “I can’t believe those people,” I said in my looking-down-my-nose voice. “A person’s got to swerve into the other lane to avoid those.”

“If it was me driving, I’d swerve to hit ‘em,” Ben said. “That’s just part of being a guy.”

I’ll have to take his word on that. I may live in a House Full of Men (kind of like a Barrel Full of Monkeys), but I wouldn't in a million years swerve to hit anything, much less a garbage bag. I don’t exactly get my guys. And they certainly don’t get me.

I was born the girliest of girls. My favorite toys as a child were Barbies and eye shadow, and when I used my imagination, it was to picture myself being really well made-up as I married somebody famous. I ran like a girl and got picked last for teams and was terrified of balls of all sizes. Figure skating – as a spectator, not a participant – was my favorite sport.

Nothing changed as I got older, either. When I was single, I once found a half-dead mouse in the middle of my living room floor and called a friend’s dad, who’d been asleep a couple of hours, to come over and get it out of there!!!!! It happened to be snowing heavily at the time, but really, what other option did I have? And when the managing partner at my law firm insisted that I play on the firm softball team, I promptly burst into tears. (The legal term for that is “career-limiting gesture.”)

Yes, I married a man, but being heterosexual, I really didn’t have much other choice, now did I? Besides, I’d grown up in what one friend tactfully described as a “matriarchal family.” I assumed Bob would find girly stuff just as compelling as all those women I’d grown up around, or else just go along to get along like the few men in my family had learned to.

It went without saying, of course, that all my children would be girls. I was so certain of this I bought a pink quilt before I was even pregnant. That turned out to have been a bit presumptuous on my part. The only kids I’m ever going to have turned out to be boys. (I finally ditched the quilt a few years ago.)

Once I got over the initial shock of ultrasounds showing penises (penii?), I discovered that there are some distinct advantages to mothering sons. As a rule, they do not care nearly as much about the presentability of their homestead as do girls. The ones I live with don’t really care whether I iron, and when Bob needs a crisp crease in his pants, he’s really good at putting it there himself. I happen to enjoy a gross-out movie now and then, and there’s always someone up for one around here. Most importantly, boys are far less concerned about what their mothers wear in public than all those girls my friends gave birth to. Ben likes it when my clothes look “Fox Valley-ish” (translation: expensive), but he’ll still get in the car with me when they don’t.

Still, there are many times when Bob and Billy and Ben start talking and I feel a wall go up around me. I don't understand what they're saying and worse, I don't want to. I could live with these guys a thousand years and still not care to talk about computers, tail lights, farts, or how airplanes work. And when I'm choosing a paint color for the bathroom, they are no help at all. They think there is only one shade of white and that it’s called “white.”

When things get really bad – when I’ve felt alone in the midst of my men for too long -- I’ll interrupt their discussion of the difference between volume and mass and say “It’s like I was telling Valerie just the other day.” They know that Valerie is my imaginary friend. She knows that there are thousands of shades of white and that not a single one is called “white.” She knows that a black sweater does not necessarily match a pair of black pants; she watches Giada De Laurentiis for her recipes, not her boobs. She knows how to pin up a hem and flute a pie crust, and there is nothing she would rather do than drive around and look at houses.

Usually the mention of Valerie will bring the conversation around to a topic we all care about, like politics, or where to eat lunch, or what a piece of crap our van is. (Mercifully, these guys care about team sports only marginally more than I do.) We’ll all be one big happy family again, until the next time they go off on a testosterone-juiced tangent.

Lately, I'm pleased to report, we’ve found a new activity we can all enjoy together: watching Project Runway, which is on tonight. I like the clothes and the tailoring technique and all the reality show drama. And the guys think the models are hot.

An update: For those of you who read yesterday’s entry, I am happy to report the sofa is gone. Garbage trucks must be roomier than I thought.