Because he's meaner than your mother. Because he was once a teenage boy, too, and he knows how your brain operates...even though you'd like to deny it and claim no genetic similarities to the wise and just adult male who sits next to you at the dinner table...or was that the wise a*% who sits next to you at the dinner table?
From the mom's perspective, I'm thinking it's a little of both, as last night we were having our (now) nightly dinner conversation about Oldest Son's grades. I announced to my husband in a pleased-as-punch voice that Alex had come up with "a plan" to get his reading grade out of the hole it was in.
"A plan?" the Dad said, amazed that Oldest Son was actually thinking ahead. "What kind of plan?"
"Well, you know we have those root tests every week, and Miss D said in this novel we're reading if we find root words and write down the definitions, we get one extra credit point for each word. And there's no limit. I'm going to get 100. I've already got 36. She said the most anyone ever turned in was 32!" Alex announced, grinning ear to ear with the brilliance of his plan.
"She's never met you," I muttered, thinking this woman was probably going to be pulling her hair out by the end of the year or rapidly going gray (which I've noticed I've been doing this fall...go figure). Bet she didn't plan on grading 100 Latin and Greek root word definitions this weekend, but hey, she offered...
"Yeah, just call him BoBo the Root Boy," the Dad casually tossed out, causing me to choke on my just-sipped milk, very nearly spitting it all over the table in juvenile boy fashion. (BoBo, BTW, would be our pet name for Oldest Son, much to his chagrin).
Then, of course, I couldn't stop laughing...and my family looked on with rising panic, never having seen the Mom lose it at dinner like this.
"I'm sorry," I gasped between guffaws. "I just had visions of story lines dancing in my head...you know...'Bo Bo the Root Boy Saves the World, One Latin Prefix at a Time'. Hey, where's my notebook?"
My kids continued to stare, quite sure I'd gone over the edge. My husband, however, now saw the added humor and was trying not to fall off his chair as he contained his mirth, eyes watering as he held in full belly laughs.
"See? That's why we have to have questions for you to answer at dinner...so we can have polite conversation," my husband informed our three very confused children. "Otherwise we have this..." he said gesturing to me, still trying hard to return to reality from the fictional world of BoBo the Root Boy and not succeeding.
It's okay, though. A little laughter through chaos at the family dinner table brings everyone closer together, right? Excuse me...I said, "Right?!"
Don't mess with your mother...or your father, now, Son. Riiiight, as Bill Cosby says.