Our new street is pretty small — only 10 or 12 houses. Guess how many of those houses have resident children? Just one and that house is ours.
Needless to say, our girls are bummed. They were really hoping to meet some new children and make new friends. But then again, maybe it’s not such a bad thing because resident kids do not equal bosom buddies. There were three girls on our old street and my girls only played with one of them.
As it happens, there are two houses behind us and they have kids.
Boys.
Yes my friends, there are boys living behind us. At least three between the two houses. Possibly more. It’s hard to tell because they’re always all over the place and it’s like trying to count guppies in an aquarium.
And all those boys appear to be between 10 and 12 years old.
Heaven help us.
This is no surprise to us. Last summer, we kept catching glimpses of them playing in the dirt pile behind our house. We’d pull up to the front and they’d skin out the back, apparently never realizing that running straight for home helped us ID them pretty quickly. And when they started messing around with stuff on the site, such as filling the building crew’s water cooler with dirt and leaves, we seriously considered paying a call on our neighbors or at least electrifying the back fence.
I’m kidding.
We weren’t actually going to talk to the kids’ parents.
A couple of weekends ago, we were unpacking boxes and we noticed a boy standing at the fence. Then he climbed up on it. I walked to the back door, which is full glass, and watched him. He saw me and I waved at him. He visibly flinched and then got off our fence.
So, yeah, we have boys living behind us.
And my girls are irritated by this. They are at that age when boys are nuisances that must be endured.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate.
Elegant doesn’t even NOTICE boys. She doesn’t scorn them; she simply doesn’t see them. Seriously. It’s like they’re invisible to her.
Graceful, on the other hand, notices boys and generally believes that they are inferior creatures. They’re barely even human in her opinion and certainly not worthy of her admiration. There are a couple of boys in her class that get her grudging respect because they’re smart and give her a run for her academic money. You would not believe how often she complains about one particular boy because the two of them always get the highest grades and they’re pretty much always within a point or two of each other. It drives her absolutely crazy to be bested by a male creature.
I am generalizing a bit here. There is a small, select group of boys who are acceptable to my girls — their cousins and a few other boys whose families we are close to, so those boys are like cousins to my kids. Otherwise, boys are adolescens non grata to the resident girls of Jenworld.
(Yes, I looked up the Latin word for “adolescent boy” just for this blog post. The things I do for you people…)
(Also, if you are the parents of a boy or multiple boys, do not take this post to mean that I don’t appreciate your particular male child/ren. I do. Truly. I have brothers and nephews. Hell, even my husband was a boy once. So I’m not knockin’ on boys.)
(But my girls will and do.)
Yesterday afternoon, Graceful noticed that a couple of the boys who live behind us were playing outside and, as far as she was concerned, they were getting a bit too close to the border of Jenworld. So she appointed herself Border Patrol and went outside to keep an eye on the alien creatures just beyond the perimeter. I couldn’t see from the house, but I’m pretty sure she was giving them the Evil Eye, just daring them to get near HER fence.
I told her when she came inside that she needs to be polite to our neighbors, even if they are annoying boys. She said she didn’t talk to the boy creatures until they spoke to her first. I asked what they said and she said they wanted to know why she was talking to a tree. Well, because it’s her favorite and she has named it. (Doreen.) (Well, duh, isn’t that the first name you’d give a tree?) As you can expect, the boys didn’t understand this, so I can only imagine the conversation at their family’s dinner table last night:
“That new girl who lives behind us is crazy. She was talking to a TREE. A tree! Can you imagine that? Girls are so weird.”
Oh yeah, this is going to be a great relationship, I can just tell.
Too bad this won’t last for much longer. Because, in a few years, I’m going to have a gorgeous blonde haired, blue eyed, long legged teenager in my house and there are going to be a few teenage boys living within 100 feet of Jenworld.
And damn it all, I *will* electrify the back fence then. And I might also have to build a hunting blind in Doreen’s branches so that I can keep an eye on things.
I’m so glad I have a boy — there’s just one of him and I can tie him up. But with girls, there’s one of them and LOTS of the boys to beat off with a stick.
I find it incredibly charming that Graceful has christened the tree Doreen.
Yes, boys…they will become more tolerable with time.
I totally remember feeling that way about boys! I wonder what Doreen thinks of the boys.
There was a boy I went to school with who always had top grades like me. He ended up going to the same college as me, and then became a major league baseball player. Overachieving jerk.
Love this story of new neighborhoods and future headaches/dates…:D
And I also adore that your daughter named & talks to a tree.
A hunting blind. Heh.
We had four, count ‘em, four boys living next door to us. Noisy? Oh my. It. Was. Awful. And the noise? The best part.
Anywho. When we moved in they ranged in age from 4 to 16. My middle daughter was home from college that summer and was convinced the 16-year-old was peeping through the windows at her. So she named him Perv Boy, and by association his brothers were Perv Boy Junior, Little Perv Boy, and Baby Perv Boy.
They moved last year. (There is a God.)
You need to enlist Doreen’s help – she can be your spy on the perimeter.
A couple of years ago, I think, I posted about girls. I said something, I think, about not “liking” girls much – about being terribly happy with all boys. I wasn’t particularly cruel – I merely explained how different raising girls must be.
OH THE EMAIL. THE HORROR. THE BACKLASH.
Good luck. Perhaps your readers are more “casual.”
Electrify the fence before the trouble begins! A tree? Not bad and I agree, Doreen needs to be employed to secure the perimeter.
Tell the girls, boys only get worse with age – they have more cooties (I married one recently, I should know)
Doreen is a lovely name for a tree.
We have a tree in our front yard (actually the neighbor’s front yard, but close enough) that has one of those face sculptures installed on the side. His name is Mr. Jefferson. I don’t think the girls talk to him all that much though. Perhaps they should so he won’t be lonely.
I could laugh and feel smug about your “boy” problem, but then I remember that my girls are not that far behind yours in years so whatever misery and angst awaits you, it’s just a preview for me.
Let me know how that fence works out.
I don’t remember going through that stage with boys, except the boys that were really mean and obnoxious (I’ll never forget the boy that grabbed an entire stalk of fresh sandspurs and flung them at me, where the entire stalk promptly stuck painfully in my arm like little needles, and pulling them out left a trail of blood running down my arm. I hated him.)
However I WAS the weird girl naming the trees, talking to all of nature, and giving burials to dead bugs found on the ground. You know– the sensitive and empathetic soul that the boys definitely would view curiously as a little weird and totally incomprehensible.
And, oh, do I remember the territorial stage! Watching the borders of our property, making sure no boy rode his bike over our hill or climbed our big tree! Woe to the boy who dared!
I love that she named the tree Doreen (you’re gonna have to delete this post though, ’cause one day she’ll kill you for telling us all about it!).
I’m pretty sure that all our neighbours with girls will be electrifying their fences against Bad one day….but Hubs and I just plan to lock the Princess in a tower until she’s 30.
Oh, my two girls are the same way! My oldest (12) is just starting to notice boys this year, and grudgingly acknowledge that some are “cute.” My youngest is only concerned with whether or not she can pick up (yep, literally LIFT) the boys in her class. Otherwise? Useless.
LOL @ the Graceful border patrol.
My girls go to after-school daycare with boys, so there are a few who are everyday playmates, though they are a bit younger. Leah has a couple of friends in her class who are boys (which is quite distinct from being boyfriends, as we all know), probably because her interests veer towards the non-girly for the most part. (Did I mention the snake party we are having in a couple of weeks for her birthday. Snakes. Real ones.) Anyhoo, her close BFFs are girls, and they get all imaginary worlds of horses and unicorns together, but she still hangs with the boys sometimes. Rae too.
Also, Doreen cracks me up.
counting guppies in a an aquarium.
priceless
and true, btw!!
Try having a boy living in your house. If I had a Doreen, I’d build a house in her and live up there until my son is out of this 4-year-old-sassy stage.
she named your tree! Love it!
As the mother of Team Testosterone, I find all of your observations adroit–and I, for one, fully agree with electrifying your fence sooner rather than later. I love my monsters, but I’d hardly blame neighbors for taking extreme measures to keep them off their property!
Frank’s had his heart broken by two girls so far…so where should the fence go?
If my experience means anything, even when they begin to find boys interesting , they will completely ignore the ones in close proximity and pine for the ones completely out of reach.
A bunch of 10-12 year old boys? No wonder they’re playing outdoors…the smell inside would send any mother over the edge.
Doreen? I love that.
*snort* This is such an awesome post! My kid is currently obsessed with who is a boy vs who is a girl. Makes for funny conversations with a 2 year old!
They will go from “useless” to sitting-on-your-couch-eating-your-snacks in NO TIME!
Our neighborhood was chock full of girls. We used to call them all The Giggle Sisters.
One summer it was Sisterhood of the Travelling Sleepover, so every 3rd or 4th night there would be a level of estrogen in my house that drove my son stark raving bananas.
Great post–totally made my day!
May I suggest an Invisible Fence just for sport? Take the current fence down to look all friendly and neighborly then when they try to break the perimeter, *BAM*! Hee.
And Doreen is the perfect name for a tree.
We have two of each. The girls have gone through their boy crazy stage early – like at years three and four, when the boys are equally ga ga. (The eldest girl child was receiving calls from a young gent called Wendell. His family had to move to break up THAT connection. The other child-unit was engaged to her best boy. Now that she’s reaching the age five, she tells me that she and Nicholas have had an amicable separation and that they’re going to just be friends.
I’m not going to make it to retirement. Not with these kids!
Looks like Graceful doesn’t even need her “Spy Girl” bag – she’s not afraid to show her face with these boys – I love that about her!
You are definitely going to need to put that electric fence in… those daughters of yours are knockouts and they aren’t even teenagers yet!
It will be so funny to show her this post about her dislike of boys in a few years!
Lol, yup. Just wait till they notice the boys behind you with interest. That’ll be the day.