Catch Up Day

Today is "Catch Up" day.

It's my term and it refers to the day when my stepson, Warren, catches up with my son, Stuart chronologically.

If you care to, you can feel sorry for me now. There are two fifteen year old males in the house. It can be challenging.

There are similarities. For instance, as I write this, both of them are on computers attempting to see just what kind of finesse is required to kill as many electronic enemies in as short a time as possible. They go to the same school, they both live with their mothers, they have many of the same friends and they have been known to have lunch together once or twice a week.

My paranoid self says that they probably talk about me.

They are also quite different. For instance, Stuart is the social gadabout. Warren would just as soon not leave the house to be with people. I find a double inconsistancy with their selves because of their extracurricular activities. The social gadabout runs Cross Country, more of an individual sport, while he who shuns humanity plays in Band... and not just any band, the Allen High School Band is one of the biggest High School marching bands in Texas if not the United States (around 650 members... hell, that's more than half of the people attending Chillicothe High when I was there!).

Go figure.

"Catch Up Day" this year became a bit more special to me due to the fact that I got a Facebook friend request from the person who was my best friend when I was 15.

Greg lived just down the street from me next to the Funeral Home in another rambling old house which seemed to stretch out over half the lot. We had both moved to southern Ohio from the Cleveland area and as a result were not quite up to speed with the goings on of our various acquaintances who had grown up to that point in Chillicothe. We shared many of the same likes and dislikes and found quite a number of ways to get into trouble... not that our parents ever found out.

Come to think of it, I might be ahead to lock the boys up and throw away the keys for a few years. On the other hand, they would miss sneaking around the city at midnight on a supposed sleepover, or making home-made wine in the basement (oddly enough with Greg's dad's permission) and consuming it while running around the city at midnight.

(It's 41 years later, Greg... are we going to be sent to our rooms without supper or be grounded or something?)

Ah, to be fifteen again! I hope that Warren enjoys it.

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Let's take a moment to remember Barbara Billingsly who passed earlier this weekend. To those of us in my generation, she was June Cleaver, Ward's wife and mother to Wally and the Beaver. Not only did she supposedly utter the unintentionally funny but dirtiest phrase on television in the 1950s (think about it...), but she was uproariously funny in AIRPLANE as the woman who volunteered to translate "Jive" for the stewardess.

Ah, that we could live forever!



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