I may have intimated in the past that my family is competitive. We play board games and penny-ante poker. We place nickle bets on races (cars and horses) and football. In this friendly spirit of one-upsmanship, the boys began giving and taking away Good Son points and it may be a version of "Mother always liked you best." I'm not really involved in this. I think it started with Clay. He probably did an act of kindness (which he does quite often) and the others said, "Oh, sure. You're the Good Son." It became the watch-word for the boys. Deb (she gets nongender points) and Craig got points when they busted their butts doing yard work up here. Dave called Clay to gloat about his Good Son points when he replaced the storm doors recently. Clay racked up points yesterday when he got a head start on painting the trim on the house. The base of the deck is essentially one story up with one end fifteen feet above the ground. That means a hundred trips up and down, painting as far as the arm can reach and having to move the ladder forward. It was "only" 96 degrees in the shade. My job was to provide ice water and an occasional beer and make lunch and dinner to keep up his strength.
In the midst of this project, Harold the iron-monger and his helper, Lulu, came up. Harold deals in scrap and will take just about anything made of metal. I called Clay away from his work (gave him a break) to advise me on what I needed to keep and what to give Harold. I was very glad to get rid of a set of oxy-acetylene tanks from the shop. What with this, that, and the other thing, Harold drove off with a big pickup load full of what I considered trash and he considered treasure.
A fringe benefit for me while they're scoring points is getting to spend some one-on-one time with the Kids, a chance to talk and get caught up with what's happening in their lives. When it's a free-for-all get together, we're always involved in the activity of the day and chatting is a sideline.
Who's the winner in the Good Son point competition? It's me!
It was a good day.
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1 comment:
I love hearing about your good days, and it sounds like you kept Clay hydrated and fed so he will live another day to rack up all those points!
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