It’s a backyard boy’s life

My sister-in-law, Ali Lomneck, has been having some trouble with loud barking coming from the backyards of two separate neighbors. As one might expect, a canine is responsible for some of the noise, but, surprisingly, a young boy is the source of the other bark.

I found this amusing because it reminded me of my own son barking at our neighbors when we first moved into our house. He was around 4 years old at the time and our neighbors had two sons: one was my son’s age and the other was a few years older. Needless to say, he was never invited over to play at their house.

Of course, neighbors are not what they used to be. I remember knowing everyone on my street as well as the adjoining roads when I was a kid. If I were a paranoid person, I would think that, these days, people must be hiding some secret life behind their bolted doors like drug trafficking or Russian espionage, but I digress.

I had a fear that my son was going to turn into “the weird kid.” The barking was one thing, but he also exhibited an array of other questionable behaviors like shoving Fruit Loops up his nose.

The first sport he played was soccer which, as any soccer parent will tell you, is like watching a cluster of stampeding kids run up and down the field accidentally kicking each other’s shins rather than the soccer ball because they are so closely packed together.

My son was rarely ever running with the pack. Chances were you’d spy him twirling around a goal post or staring up into the sky in search of rainbows and butterflies. If he wasn’t doing that, he was giving his shirt intense quality stretch checks by repeatedly pulling it down over his knees.

This was all very difficult for my husband to tolerate. He would watch helplessly at the abundance of athletic potential being wasted on tomfoolery in the dew-covered grass during those unbearably muggy Saturday mornings.

I thought basketball would be a better fit, but that turned into an outlet for him to demonstrate his love of raw, untrained ballet moves. Any time the ball went out of bounds, he’d scramble over to the referee so he could throw the ball back in the game, but not to his team; instead, he’d catapult the ball over their heads and into the hands of the opposing team.

I should have known he was different when, at around 18 months, I caught him raiding the fridge. He wasn’t looking for cheese or grapes, but did manage to locate a stick of butter and shove it in his mouth before I could wrestle it out of his hands. Why waste time with the bread when all you really want is the spread? Take my word for it: butter is very hard to snatch out of someone’s hands.

My boy is now almost 11 and anxiously awaiting the onset of puberty so he can focus all his attention on girls who are, unfortunately, already seeking his attention. If you ask, he’ll tell you a shockingly long list of “girlfriends” he’s had since the 1^st grade. He’s quite adorable (all bias aside) and is one of the tallest boys in his school, so I suppose it is only natural that the girls have taken notice.

Even though he’s in a hurry to grow up, he still likes to cuddle with his mom, but, at his size, having him plop down on my lap is kind of like having an enthusiastic Labrador jump on my abdomen. I try to tolerate it as long as possible, but I eventually have to breathe. Sometimes, it is worth the lack of oxygen.