A foam Nerf dart hit my side. I sat in my desk chair and faced my laptop computer without flinching. Nerf darts spiraling through the air is nothing new in a house with two boys, make that three counting the biggest boy in the house, my husband.
“Mom, can I have this?” My eight-year-old son held up a blank white canvas-like board leftover from I don’t know what. Something from our oldest son’s high school graduation picnic last week? It looked slightly greasy around the edges. I think it might have been the base that the graduation cake sat on – something my mom had probably washed and saved.
“I’m going to make a target for my Nerf gun.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. A smile lifted the corners of my mouth. Maybe I wouldn’t be in the line of fire now. But I knew better. I’m sure a stray Nerf dart would somehow find its way across my path.
I opened the desk drawer looking for a marker. “I have all kinds of colors. Red, green, orange…”
“Red. Just red. Thanks Mom.”
My son plopped in the middle of the kitchen floor next to my desk. He drew circles within circles, labeling each with a different number – 10, 20, 30 – all the way to 100 in the middle.
“How do you spell suction cup, Mom?”
“S-u-c-t-i-o-n,” I replied, “And cup.”
At the top my son wrote in red, “Nerf Suction Cup Target.” On the side, he painstaking drew a picture of many of the types of Nerf guns that he and his brother acquired over the years as a handy reference.
“Now, I’m going to get my Longshot,” my son said hopping up and ran to the garage for his biggest Nerf gun.
I listened through the open door to the rummaging sounds in the garage. After several minutes he returned and explained which gun was best and why. He stood next to me and glanced at the computer screen and started to read.
Oh, yeah, I thought. He can read now, can’t he?
“Why are you doing this?” He covered the computer screen with his hand while like a court reporter I tried desperately to type the events of the moment as they transpired.
My son took a few steps back and moments later my back was bombarded with a barrage of Nerf darts. I guess that’s all the writing this mom will get to do for now.
Living the adventure of motherhood,
Susan
Susan
3 comments:
Such a boy! (Guns and all)
I like how he wanted to put a little detail in his target...like drawing the pictures of the guns.
Yes, there are very few quiet moments for mothers of boys.
But many priceless moments!
Love love love this!! And love that you got ambushed at the end because of it. So funny. I forsee it in my future too, and I laugh at the thought.
Ah, life with boys. Can't live with them, can't live without them.
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