September 26 – “Having it”

I briefly scanned back through the last week or so of blogs, and I can’t find any mention of Young Noa’s helpful health hint that she gave me the other day.  It’s probably already there, and you will be bored to hear it again, but it gives me a personal chuckle to revisit it anyway.  When they were over at our house the other day, she crawled up in my lap to snuggle and talk a bit about her day and whatever imaginary play world she was existing in at the time.  All of a sudden Noa patted me on the belly and said, “DadDad, you need to go be a mailman.” What’s the connection?  Well, her mailman Daddy lost about 50 pounds with all the walking he does.

While I’m on the subject of grandkids and the words of wisdom they impart … yesterday I had the joyful experience of riding to lunch and to the Waco Children’s Museum in the back seat in between eleven-year-old Zakary and eight-year-old Caleb.  The ages will become significant in a moment.  Zak was busy reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.  Caleb was thumbing through a book full of all kinds of random facts and trivia.  Guess which shoulder I chose to look over? 

On one of the pages Caleb turned to there was actually mention of The Time Machine … the movie.  As I was the only one to have seen that particular marvel of celluloid magic, I became the expert on comparing its merits to those of the book.  Caleb had a picture of the female Eloi lead.  Zak wanted to know, “Was she really short like in the book?  What did the Morlocks look like?  Were they white?”  Oh, I did the best I could, but I think it’s time to do a Netflix review of the subject.  If Netflix even has that one.  Once that particular portion of the conversation dissolved, Caleb began turning pages once again and Zak returned to the world of Morlocks. 

That’s when things got interesting.  See, Caleb’s book was a little bit about virtually everything.  At one point he explained, “There used to be another page in here, but Zak said it was not appropriate for me to look at, so he tore it out.”  Big brother watching out for the youngsters, I suppose.  Sure made me curious about what “the page” had been about.  We went through strange animals and insects and even the atom, itself.  But then he reached another category altogether.  I scanned through and came to a paragraph entitled “Puberty.”  Well, I just couldn’t resist.  “Puberty.  So what is puberty?”  Caleb had never missed a beat in his recitation of appropriate facts regarding just about everything in the book up to this point.  This one was no different.  He immediately answered, “I don’t know exactly, but Zak’s having it.”  Wait, what?  I turned to Zak, and asked, “Is this true?  Is this puberty some kind of disease?”  He responded, sort of.  Nervous, embarrassed laughter and beet red cheeks.  No words necessary.  I guess he really is having it. 

1 John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

Father, thank you for life … for growing up … with all of its puberty-esque adventures.  Amen.