Graham is 2/2 on cracking the screens on both of my brothers' TV's. Both boys were successful in smashing holes into a wall and a door with a plane in a rental that we had. That was fun. Ever find apple juice covering the floor of the juice aisle and no one in sight? My kids were there. Where was I? Comparing prices on the selection of five million different juices when they decided they wanted the glass jug on the top shelf and the only way to get to it was to climb up the shelves like eight hundred pound gorillas.
And the clothes; we are very fortunate to receive high-quality hand-me-downs. But the one thing that I have to buy new at some point are jeans. Because my kids wear out the knees in those things faster than you can yell "don't lick the electrical socket!!" I swear every time they go outside they come back in with a new rip. Caedmon got mad at me when I turned one unfortunate-looking pair of ripped jeans into shorts. Sorry, kid. You were beginning to look like a hipster.
I'm not used to boys and their antics. I used to always think, "Why couldn't I just have girls that stay clean and wear dresses and play with dolls?" Which honestly makes me dumb because I was always out catching toads and running around partially nekked in the forest by my house growing up. Even Quinn has a bit of a tomboy streak in her and stains up her clothes enough for me to feel the need to apologize to the person I hand them down to.
But, I realize my need for perfection is a societal pressure that I bow down to. Even within my own family I can see the looks of disdain when my children look borderline homeless in their torn and stained clothes, dirt-smudged faces and unkempt hair. I feel apologetic that I'm such an inattentive or lazy mom. But wait a minute........
Let us examine this further. Instead of focusing on appearances (unlike moi), my kids are outdoors. They are racing bikes on the dirt track. One falls off their bike (oh, hello hole #1 in the new pair of jeans) and instead of looking for Mother Hen to swoop in and flutter around them in a tizzy, they get up, wipe the sweat off their face with an arm (so THAT'S how the dirt got there!) and get back on the bike and go.
Climbing trees is irresistable to my kids. They can spot the perfect climbing tree a mile away. Branches are too high? CHALLENGE FLIPPIN' ACCEPTED!!! And while navigating down said tree their clothes get caught on all sorts of branches. Well there is another rip and a tear. Nevermind the fact that Mom bought this outfit for Easter.
Trucks. Oh my-lanta this is how we wear out our jeans. Playing with trucks in the grass, the gravel, the sand, the mud. Wait minute, we need to do a turning, burn-out thinger and spin around several times using our knees as pivot points.
Or the classic, "Hey let's race from here, over all of those sharp and jagged rocks, to that hill. In our flip flops. Seems stable, enough. Ow, I tripped on a rock and fell and gashed my knee, let's make this tear in my jeans bigger so we can see the blood!! K, if Mom asks, I was attacked by a bear. And now he's dead."
I guess what I'm getting at here is that instead of sitting with their faces in front of a screen most days, my ferral children are outside moving their bodies and using their imagination. How they appear isn't even a concept to them until the first thing Butthead ME says to them when they come in the door is, "Look at your clothes! Look at your faces! Dont come in my house with those shoes." When really, my first response to them should be, "I'm so glad you killed the bear. You are so brave. Let's get a bandaid. Here, have a snack before you go hunt down pirates. And I love you."
Because soon enough appearances will matter to them. They too will become aware of society's expectations for how they should look. At some point they will trade their adventures outside for (God-forbid and over-my-dead-body) more screen time. And after all, the clothes that they wear out wont matter. Material items can be replaced. But, PEOPLE are more important than THINGS.
