Strangers in a Strange Land

Ethan got glasses recently. I discovered, by a bit of a fluke, that he probably needed to have an eye exam after I caught him squinting during the entire showing of Narnia at the movie theater. Everytime I looked over to check on him, he was squinting. The next morning, I started making calls and set up an eye exam.

That evening, Paul and I took the boys to the Mall to pick out the glasses. We decided to grab dinner during the "in about an hour" part of the wait, which turned into exactly what you would expect when you set five males loose in the mall with an hour to kill.

The dinner part was good because it ate up nearly 18 minutes of our wait. This would have been even quicker, except I am The World's Slowest Eater (tm), so they were forced to sit in their seats reading their free books from the Chik-fil-A kids meal while I finished. Fortunately, the books were about Greece, and the boys are very enthralled with ancient mythology right now. That held their attention for a while, and then Paul thrilled them with his tales of climbing ancient Aztec ruins as a young boy in Mexico, and of the stories he heard about what those ancient Aztecs did up on the top. (Never underestimate the power of Ancient Human Sacrifice. Even the haziest of details will wow four boys to silence.)

After a while, the nuggets were gone, the drinks polished off, and the boys had even cleared the trash. I caught Augie laying under the table eyeing a piece of ice that would be good for licking and since the ice was on the floor, I opted to throw away the rest of my Teriyaki. It was time to move forward.

We still had some time to kill before the pick-up, so we headed to the pet store. On the way we stopped at a large display of gumballs, amazed at the wide variety of shapes and colors and flavors and someone noted how AWESOME it would be to have all those glass jars filled with small choking hazards in the playroom (except they didn't refer to it in quite that manner).

"Rach."

I looked up from the jars to see Paul waving me over to a store display. He was standing by a window filled with pint-sized capris and glittery T's.

"Who wears this stuff," he asked in amazement.

"Pre-teen girls, I think."

"Yuck," he said staring. The boys stood next to him, equally mesmerized by the shiny textiles. "Let's go," said Paul.

At the pet shop, Daddy spent a long time looking at leashes and collars, dreaming of the day he could buy one without fear of the dog chewing it to bits. The boys enjoyed the rats and fish and (most of all) snakes. We ended our stint there when Mommy got tired of holding the boys so they could stare the featured reptile straight in the eye. They were loving it. I was creeped out.

At this point, we were sort of ambling our way through the joint, slowly heading back because we still had a good ten minutes to go. We stopped at the fountain where, instead of staring dreamy-eyed into the water wondering what all those wishes were (like I did as a girl), the boys talked about gathering up all the money to buy "something good," and then got dangerously close to falling in (which I also did as a girl. Except my fall was totally by accident and if the boys ever did this I would bet my bottom quarter it was part of a stunt).

None of this may seem like any kind of grand adventure to you, dear reader. But what gets me is the fact that every time I take the boys to the mall (and especially when we go as a family, which is not very often), I'm always amazed at what BAD shoppers they are. There is a little something called Mall Etiquette, which goes like this: when you go to the mall to pick up something at say, The Gap, you STILL enjoy a leisurely stroll through several other shops, sometimes stopping to consider other items NOT ON THE LIST. Not always, but when you have AN HOUR TO KILL, this is not unreasonable.

The most amazing (and kind of endearing) part of all of this is that my sons are exactly like their father. I shouldn't be suprised by their behavior in the mall, because they are built like Paul. When we Christmas shop, Paul doesn't understand stopping to look at any item in a store unless it was already on The List.

A few months ago, we all went to the mall to exchange some clothes I bought Paul. The boys were behaving badly, very badly, and Paul and I were both getting exasperated. "Why can't you just shop like normal boys," I asked, and then realized -- they were. Soon after that, we found a dressing area that featured the Cartoon Network on a large television in front of a comfy sectional and that was all she wrote. I could have shopped for days after that and they'd be none the wiser.

At the end of this excursion, the positive energy was so clearly gone from us that Paul and I agreed Ethan and Mommy would go inside the eye store to pick up the glasses and he would wait with the others. We were ushered to the back and seated at the pick-up bar. Ethan tried on his frames and the technician started making the necessary adjustments.

I looked to the front of the store, with its vast glass wall, and spotted Paul, Elliott, Charlie and Augie standing against it. Paul was starting to get a bit of a far-away look about him. Elliott was standing with his back against the wall, banging his bottom gently into it, while Augie writhed on the floor like a snake. I didn't spot Charlie next to them, until I looked to the store opening. There he stood, in the entrance by a variety of other eye-glass shoppers, with his hands in the air. Miming.

"I'm stuck," he said as he pressed his hands against the invisible glass. "I'm stuck in a box!"

I think all the men in the store could feel his pain.