Twelve Year Olds

It's Sunday and I'm sick. I made it through the first hour of church and then had to head home. The good thing about my loss of energy is that I have time to slow down and catch up on my blog reading, which of course, prompts me to post.

A word of caution - this will be the very random thoughts of a mother.



Gavin is almost 12. I remember my neighbor commenting about her twelve year old and stating that she cracked her up all the time from the things she'd say. I don't know what it is, maybe it's a switch in their cognitive development, but it's so true.

He teases our neighbor, a little five year old girl, all the time. He claims he's going to marry her just to make her mad. She responds negatively to this attention, which only prompts Gavin to continue with more diligence. She usually "breaks up" with him and makes him walk the school halls alone. Secretly, I think she likes this attention. We were all at her house the other day when the kids came home from school. They were whooping and hollering that this little girl was pinching Gavin's butt all the way up the stairs. When her mom got after her saying that isn't something we do to the neighbor boys, Gavin smiled and piped up, "It's okay...she's just showing me how she feels."

He was also teasing the sister of this five year old. She's Gavin's age and is over at our house all the time to hang out with Alli. She had an otter pop, which Gavin stole and held high above his head. Despite all of her attempts, she wasn't tall enough to reach her treat. I told her a sure-fire way to get that otter pop was to threaten to kiss Gavin if he didn't give it up. To my surprise, she actually did threaten Gavin with a kiss, to which he responded, "Pucker up!"

It must be the age, because this same girl was with Allison picking up some thread for me at the nearby fabric store. I sent them with my cell phone in case they had any questions. Ten minutes after they had left, I got a call on my phone. It was Alli's friend pretending to be an associate at the fabric store. And I quote: "Hi, this is Jo-Ann's Fabric Store. We have a couple of girls here who claim an acquaintance with you. They have been caught shoplifting and we'll need you to come pick them up as soon as possible." I don't know, maybe it was the way she said it, but I laughed and laughed.

The other day Gavin came home from school quite upset. I had substitute taught for a fifth grade class. One of the kids had been bad mouthing me after school about how mean I had been to his class. This particular kid was a real punk. Gavin warned him to stop, but he proceeded to get worse and worse. At about the point when the kid called me a B****, Gavin swung back his fist and hit the kid between the eyes, on the bridge of his nose, knocking him down and making him cry. Gavin was the hero at our house that day and even the principal supported him on that one.

I was tickling him a few nights ago to try and cheer him up. When I moved to his arm pits he yelled out, "Mom, not my arm pits! Those are private and I NEED my hairs for P.E.! I gave him a puzzled look. "What? They make me manly."

Between the off-the-wall comments and the quirky jokes, or even the notes from girls I continue to find in pants pockets, twelve years old is an age to look forward to.