Home with the boys

Yes, it's true. My husband and daughter are still, sadly, Chicago Cub fans. In fact, this weekend they traveled to the Big Midwestern City to watch their favorite team lose a game. This is a peculiarly torturous thing that Chicago Cub fans do periodically. They make pilgrimages to Wrigley Field to watch other teams hit balls out of the park. Then they take solace in the fact that Cub fans will retrieve the homerun balls and toss them scornfully back onto the field, refusing to keep a ball hit by the opposing team.

Since we don’t have cable television, going all the way to the midwest is the only way the two fans in this household ever see a game, so these pilgrimages are especially important to them. Myself, I don't see the value in traveling a long distance to watch men hit balls around a field while thousands of disappointed fans teeter between dejection and hope. But my husband and daughter think that the anguish of the loss will be a father/daughter bonding experience that will make them both stronger people.

And of course, their weekend away means I get a weekend home with the Pseudonymous Boy Band, a weekend filled with music and testosterone. Last night, they were all up late, playing until the early hours of the morning. Boy in Black and Older Neighbor Boy had many earnest discussions about what songs they were going to learn next. Our newest extra, NextHendrix, demonstrated for all of us his ability to play the guitar behind his back. This morning, the boys all rolled out of bed, or actually, stood up from the floor, since that is where they all sleep, and began playing again.

Boy in Black, when asked by a reporter last week what his goal in life was, said, "I want to be the next Bob Dylan." To help achieve that goal, he acquired a set of harmonicas for his birthday. With his usual determination, he has spent every spare minute learning to play them. When he drove with me to the garage so that we could pick up my car, for instance, he brought the harmonicas and the book and practiced as we drove along. Of course, it’s possible that he was just trying to drown out the sarcastic remarks I was making about paying seventy bucks to find out that my transmission is shot, but mostly that sort of intensity is typical of Boy in Black. Nothing stands in his way when he wants to do something.

This afternoon, I drove the gang to the Cool Music Store so that Older Neighbor Boy could get his own set of harmonicas, and so that we could spend hours wandering around a store that actually encourages teenagers to just hang out and test the guitars and amps, a store so filled with noise that it actually makes my house seem quiet.

In return for my patience, I made them pose for the blog.



The Pseudonymous Boy Band: Boy in Black, Shaggy Hair Boy, Philosophical Boy, With-a-Why, Skater Boy, and Older Neighbor Boy.