MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids
Ultimate Points
My mother-in-law called me a few nights ago from her home in Portland with a question. “What do you know about naked points? Are they really real?”
In our extended family, my husband and I are the resident ultimate Frisbee experts, with cumulative decades of play between us (though in recent years he is playing soccer, and I have been sidelined with my ankle).
Anyway, the naked point. If you haven’t been keeping up with the news, the U of O’s ultimate Frisbee team is barred from nationals after a string of infractions, the latest being the infamous naked point, wherein all players on both teams get naked and play a point—just one—with parts flapping in the wind. One newspaper described a naked point as one team taking off their shirts and the other taking off their shorts and undershorts. Not quite. At least not the points I’ve seen (and no, I haven’t played any). The points were au natural all the way – both teams. Except for socks and cleats. The news from Oregon has generated a ton of online conversation (below the article), as well as its share of amused readers.
In defense of ultimate players, I will say everyone involved in naked points knows they’re risky, especially if the field the teams are playing on has neighborhood houses nearby. And most players are prepared for consequences. That said, I’ve never known anyone to get in trouble for it—it’s usually quick, reasonably discreet, as discreet as 14 naked people can be, and it attracts so much attention from the other ultimate games (tournament setting) that the ensuing crowd around the field hides any offending skin from potential uninitiated bystanders. (Ultimate players get hopped up about naked points, too.) But I sense the naked point was the proverbial straw, not the cause, for this team that, I must say, seems a tad out of control. I hasten to add that people who play ultimate do not normally play naked points. It happens, but it’s a random and rare occurrance. Tournaments are played fully clothed 99 percent of the time.
Oddly, and I have to think coincidentally, Ty wanted to go to the park this weekend to throw the Frisbee (disc, I should say). He has never asked to go to the park to throw the disc. He and his sister openly abhor ultimate after too many years of entertaining themselves on the sidelines while Mom and Dad ran around and ignored them.
Not only did he want to toss the disc around, Ty actually wanted me to throw it so he could dive for it. Now there’s a boy after my own heart. (Really, I had no idea I cared.) I don’t know what got him thinking about ultimate because I don’t think he overheard our conversations about naked points, but even if he did I can’t imagine it would influence his choice to throw the disc around.
At any rate, I will quite happily shepherd him towards ultimate if this game is the direction he goes. Despite the recent negative press, ultimate is a great game, and the people who are play it are good, law-abiding folks who are also interesting and fun. If Ty ends up at a college where the students play ultimate, and he gets on the team, I say good on ya. And if he takes his clothes off to play a point, well, there are worse things in life. I will be the first to laugh if I read about it in the newspaper.
leave a comment!Boy Thoughts
“Mom, do you know what foxy means?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, today C. told me that his neighbor thinks it means the same thing as being a trickster and he thinks his dad is foxy. His dad is ‘foxy.’ Can you imagine a dad being foxy?”
Ty cackles as he tells the story.
Do kids still use this word? Were boys foxy in my day or was it just girls? I think both. (And, yeah, I can think of some foxy dads.)
“What do you think foxy means, Ty?”
“Well, you know.” Ty smiles mischievously and pumps his eyebrows up and down.
“Like cute?” I say. “A pretty girl?”
“Well, you know, not pretty.”
“What, then?”
“Sexy.”
Ahh. “Can’t foxy mean pretty?" I say. “What’s the equivalent for a boy?”
“Hot,” says Curt, walking in on our conversation.
Oh yeah. Hot.
“A girl can be hot, too, though,” I say.
“But a boy can’t be foxy,” says Ty. He laughs again and swivels his tiny hips. “Foxy.”
Apparently when you're nine, boys can't be sexy. Just girls. Titillating stuff, I tell you.
The Birthday Card
When I handed my son the birthday card we were sending to my sister-in-law, he studied it first with wry amusement before opening it to sign his name. I wondered if I would have to explain.
“That’s funny,” he said. And then, “Who are the Seven Menopausal Dwarves?”
A word of explanation: my sister-in-law and I are a month apart in age and although we haven’t hit this phase of life just yet, we’re experiencing some of the symptoms. Most women in their forties are. And most would recognize themselves as one of the dwarves—at least part of the time—on the card I found for my sister-in-law. A joke, mind you.
How do you explain menopause to a nine-year-old boy who doesn’t even know what periods are? I really drew a blank at first. But then I tried, starting at the end with how grandmas don’t make babies anymore and why, and his eyes were glazing over before I’d gotten through that part of the explanation.
It was way too vague for him to connect menopause with babies, which are connected with sex, which is connected with private body parts, and…now we’re getting somewhere. Only he never made the connection. And I didn't make it for him.
“Who’s Bloaty?” he wanted to know.
Unbridled Excitement
When Ty was little, around age four and five, he used to sleep in until 8:00 or 8:30 on Christmas morning. I thought it was because he was such a sensible, unexcitable child – so unlike his sister who, even at eleven, blasts us with her loud enthusiasm, whether complaining or cheering, and at four was capable of ripping open all the presents, not just hers, if we weren’t watching.
I am eating crow. I think Ty slept that late back then because he didn’t really get the whole Christmas thing. Now, at nine, he totally gets it, so much so he couldn’t get to sleep until close to midnight on Christmas Eve, long after his now-sensible sister had gone to bed. And had gone to sleep. I didn’t get to bed until late myself (directly correlated with Ty’s bedtime), and I must have not gotten to the REM stage because somewhere in the back of my brain as I was sleeping, I registered a very small noise. Something like a…oh crap, a door opening! In fact, it was Ty’s door closing, a teeny, tiny tap of a sound, after he’d silently emerged from his room to sneak downstairs.
By the time I got to the stairs to order him back to bed, the landing was already empty. I flew down the stairs to see a blurry shape (no contacts in) in front of the Christmas tree.
“Ty, go back to bed!” I stage whispered, utterly irritated.
He turned toward me, his hand already on an (unwrapped) Santa gift. “I was cold.”
What?
“It’s 2:30 in the morning!” I stage-whisper barked. What I wanted to say, fought against saying, was, “It’s two-effing thirty. In. The. Morning.”
“Go back to bed,” I whisper-shouted.
“Leah’s up.”
“What!? Where?”
“On the couch.”
From my vantage point in the dining room, I couldn’t see the couch in the living room. “Both of you, GO BACK TO BED.”
They both shuffled past me, as I shot them crease-between-the-eyebrows glares. And we all went back to bed. Maybe they’ll sleep until 8:00, I thought.
Uh, no. 6:30.
I guess it could have been worse. My neighbor’s son didn’t go to sleep at all.
1 commentSwordfighting
A couple nights ago, Ty taught me about swordfighting. “What is swordfighting?” I asked him, suspicious. Because I happen to know he does not own a sword, play or otherwise. Does he use sticks? Somehow, even before he explains, I already know sticks are not part of the equation.
Ty cackles, swivels his hips, puts his hand in front of his pelvis, and mimes aiming. You know.
“You swordfight with pee?”
“Yeah.”
“Where? Outside?” Please outside.
“No, in the bathroom. I do it with O.”
“Do you get pee on the floor?” Or the walls, I wonder? This is all I can think about.
“No,” he crows. “We do it into the toilet. We cross the streams into the toilet.”
An image here of the two little boys standing together, aiming together, laughing their heads off. The antidote for a mundane bodily function. Girls don’t have this have this kind of opportunity to bond, or maybe we do but we don’t think of it (or are we above it?). Then again, I can’t envision the physics of it or the necessary proximity to…oh never mind.
“Ty, I don’t like the idea of you ‘swordfighting’ in the bathroom. Maybe if you’re outside in the yard or something.” Am I being uptight?
Ty stares at me, incredulous. “What? Why not? Daddy does it!”
Really.
2 comments