October 22, 2007

Bounce

I was grading papers at my desk yesterday afternoon when loud noises began outside my door. It sounded like my teenage boys were bouncing balls off the door of my office. The balls would thump, the boys would laugh, and every once in a while, I heard a crash as something hit the floor. I listened for a minute. I could hear a bunch of muttering that sounded as if they were making up rules to a new game, and the repeated use of the word DRAIN, which usually followed the crashing noise.

I put down my pen and opened the door.

"Hey, watch this, " said Shaggy Hair Boy. He threw a ball, which bounced off the floor, banked off the wall, and fell into the metal garbage can they were using as a basket. Boy in Black grinned at me before turning to toss a ball over his shoulder, backwards. The ball hit the floor, bounced, banked off the bookcase, and just missed the metal basket.

"Isn't this really an outdoor game?" I said, reverting to the kind of language I used when the kids were young.

Boy in Black and Shaggy Hair exchanged a glance, both sort of rolling their eyes. With-a-Why looked at me in surprise. "How could we play this outside? We need walls to bank off."

8 comments:

YourFireAnt said...

Their next project wasn't building themselves some walls outdoors?

FA

Rana said...

Man. And I thought the cat batting a pingpong ball down the wooden stairs was bad!

Silver Creek Mom said...

LMAO! Yeah Mom, you really weren't thinking there. Did they go outside?
;)

Heather said...

lol..cute kids, cute naked cat too

zombieswan said...

When I heard "office" I immediately thought of the young lady student who likes to use the desk, meant for taking tests and studying, right outside my work office door to sit at and have long hilarious chats on her cellphone. I don't like to be "grupmy office Professor" who yells at students for being young "you kids today, grrr" but man she is pushing it. She's picked that seat at least three times in the last two weeks to have a nice long chat. And now that it's turning cold, I can see her doing it more often.

I may have to post a passive aggressive note on the desk about no cell phone calls. Because she makes me have to close my office door, which I hate doing.

But your boys, on the other hand, are always adorably smart. I can just hear the "duh" in their voices.

zombieswan said...

grupmy?!. That's a funny word.

GRUMPY! Sorry for the correction post but I can't let it go. Spelling errors in my comments make me OCD. :)

kathy a. said...

what, you don't have outdoor walls? not that it will cut down on the racket so much, but there's less chance of stuff getting broken. or the dreaded mom meltdown: "leave. now. i mean it."

duopastorale said...

Good point.