Summer's coming

Spring semester tends to disintegrate when the sunny weather arrives, melting like a chocolate bar left on the dashboard of a car. Even though I’m on sabbatical, I can tell the semester is ending by listening to the gang of college students in my living room. I’d like to say that they’ve been working hard to finish their courses, but really, I’m not sure which class requires students to play computer games all night. Not that it’s all been computer games, of course. Sometimes it’s poker or Scrabble.

One night I counted six computers in the living room: really, it was a Geek Fest. Much to the amusement of his peers, FirstExtra decided to start teasing me because my computer is a Mac. Once he gets on a roll, he’s hilariously funny, but I can’t print his insulting comments. I don’t want to encourage him. I know he reads my blog because every time I post a naked photo, he says stuff like, “OMG! Why didn’t you warn me? My eyes are burning!”

Boy in Black always says he doesn’t read my blog – unless he’s got a lot of work to do and has a real need to procrastinate – but Blue-eyed Ultimate Player cheerfully admits that he’s even read stuff from the archives. I keep warning him that he’s going to end up on the blog sooner or later if he keeps spending so much time with us. He’s a sophomore from a town called Sandwich, which is such a cool name for a town that I can’t improve it with a pseudonym.

This time of year, academic efforts are pretty half-hearted. “I’ve got a Quantum Mechanics test tomorrow,” Boy in Black will say, “Want to go outside and throw?” Boy in Black’s method of studying for final exams is to sleep on the couch near his textbooks while the alarm on his cell phone goes off – annoyingly – every ten minutes. Blue-eyed Ultimate Player, about to start a project midnight before it was due, told me his strategy was to choose a topic his writing teacher didn’t know anything about. “I was going to write about suicide in the 1930s. Who knows anything about that? I don’t.”

Boy in Black’s injury (originally diagnosed as a pulled groin, now diagnosed as osteitis pubis, or an inflamed pubic bone) is STILL preventing him from playing Ultimate, but that doesn’t stop him from talking about the sport obsessively or practicing his flick. His friends’ method of cheering him up includes a constant stream of groin jokes. There’s a reason I haven’t been putting my kids’ dialogue on my blog these days ….

Now that the warm weather is here, the boys have been wearing new Ultimate shorts – which they ordered in bright colours. Boy in Black’s shorts are pink. Yes, whenever he chooses a colour other than black, pink is his choice. He’s known for the pink bandana he wears to pull his long hair back. Shaggy Hair Boy’s shorts are bright yellow, which teamed with an orange shirt, make him look like an Easter egg, except much skinnier. FirstExtra’s shorts are plaid. Yes. Plaid. With-a-Why's are purple. And Blue-eyed Ultimate Player? I don’t know what he usually wears, but when it got hot here, he put on the pair of blue shorts that are supposed to be my daughter’s. We are pretty communal when it comes to clothing.

Sunday morning, I woke up to find Shaggy Hair Boy, Boy in Black, and Blue-eyed Ultimate Player still awake in the living room, blearily playing some kind of computer game, intently discussing strategy. Despite their claims that they didn’t need sleep, I came back later to find to find them dozing on the couch and chair. My daughter, awake and showered, nudged me and pointed to Blue-eyed Ultimate Player. “Take a photo of him while he’s asleep. Then he’ll be surprised when he shows up on your blog.”