Teenage boys’ brains
By Gwendolynne Larson (Contact)
Originally published 12:33 p.m., November 13, 2007
Updated 12:33 p.m., November 13, 2007
Shonna was right, but I refused to believe her.
She told me that Alex would lose his mind when he headed to high school. She’d watched it happen with her own two sons, both now juniors.
We all know the classic Family Circus cartoon when one of the children comes to Mom as the schoolbus waits outside. “I’m supposed to take four dozen cookies to school today,” he says.
Shonna assured me it wasn’t just little boys who did this. She went on to recount a time when Derrek came to her the night before he needed food cooked for a school function. And he wasn’t talking about cookies and cakes. Nope, he needed meat fried up for the main dish.
The best part to Shonna’s story was that her other son, Ryan, after witnessing the reaction to Derrek’s late-breaking news, did the same thing the next week — telling his mom the night before that he needed five pounds of grated cheese for a meal.
Now, news like this isn’t easy when you live out of town. Still, Shonna’s family, like ours, live within 10 minutes of Emporia grocery stores. I can’t imagine what North Lyon County families in Allen, Admire, Reading or Bushong do at 9 p.m. Perhaps they keep a half-full grocery store in their barns.
I laughed as Shonna told me the story, but knew that my Alex — the son who keeps track of our family’s various schedules better than I do — would never do that.
Then came the fruit snacks incident.
Alex told me at least four days in advance that he needed fruit snacks for some kind of class project. He needed them by Friday. That was workable, because I planned to hit the grocery store on Thursday night while Aaron was at his Cub Scout meeting in Emporia. Luke had an away football game, and Greg was at that. Alex, meanwhile, got off the activity bus and went to his godparents’ house for dinner.
Aaron and I arrived at Sarah’s house around 8 p.m. to pick up Alex. Sarah and I had some catching up to do, so it was 9 p.m. before the boys and I left.
“Did you get the fruit snacks?” Alex asked.
I assured him I did and told him I’d picked up a box of strawberry fruit roll-up treats.
“How many are in a box?” he asked.
“Six,” I said.
“I need enough for 20,” he replied.
I was speechless for about 30 seconds, then began my interrogation starting with finding out when he received this vital piece of information.
“I just found out today,” he said, a fact I found hard to believe, but let it slide.
“And I don’t have a cell phone, so I couldn’t call you,” he added with the typically aggrieved tone of a 14-year-old.
He’s been wanting a cell phone for years, and Greg and I have refused. When he begins driving by himself — just a few months away — he can have one, but not before. Back in junior high, he would have gone to the office and asked to call me. In high school, he doesn’t even have that thought. Still, not a problem.
“What about e-mail?” I asked him, knowing that he has Internet access during the school day. I reminded him that I have three e-mail accounts that I check throughout the day.
Still, there was an even better idea.
“Why didn’t you call me when you got to Sarah’s house?” I asked. “I didn’t go to the grocery store until at least 6:30.”
Of course he hadn’t thought of that. And, of course, after dropping the boys at home with orders to take showers and get to bed, I found myself at Reeble’s at 9:30 p.m. buying three more boxes of fruit snacks.
That was my first encounter with the well-proven fact that, as teen hormones increase, the brain cells decrease. This past week, I was reminded once again after Alex came home from a basketball team meeting. He told me there would be practice after school but, for the first week, they would also have early-morning practices.
“But we’ll just be shooting in the mornings,” he said.
I didn’t care what they would be doing, I just wanted to know when he had to be at Northern Heights.
“What time does the morning practice start?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to ask someone.”
Having learned not to trust him to remember, I asked Shonna the next night.
“They have morning practices?” was her quizzical reply.
Guess her boys didn’t give her the news, either.
Not to be daunted, I found Alex and Ryan together.
“So,” I said to Ryan, “do you know what time shooting practices start?”
He looked at me with a stunned expression.
“We have morning practices?”
Oh, boy.
In that moment, I pictured Ryan 10 years down the road, looking up at his wife with that same deer-in-the-headlights look.
“Your parents are coming here for Thanksgiving?” he asks.
I’ve decided that we moms can’t stop the brain drain in our boys — it must be genetically programmed onto the Y chromosome. All we can do is teach our boys how to avoid the arguments that come with follow-up comments like “you never told me that” or “just when were you going to tell me?”
And to my future daughters-in-law — you have my sincere apologies.
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