cleanliness may be next to godliness...

but messiness is da bomb.

My son, Q, is in a science and math camp this week, which is about 5 minutes from where I work, and 35 minutes from where I live. One of his good friends and another boy from this area are all taking it together, so we parents are doing the "divide and conquer" carpooling approach. Since DH and I work down there in those parts, we are officially designated the "take home" ride. It works out perfectly. Logistically speaking, that is. I work my 8 hour summer day (only 3 days a week!!!! Don't feel sorry for me!!!) and after my 8 hours of hard labor staring at the computer, arguing with my team mates, drinking diet cokes, and rubbing my head in frustration, I take my lively, awake self with no backaches whatsoever over to the campus at 4:30 sharp to pick up these three delightful, intelligent, and oh-so-well-behaved young men. What's the saying? Two out of three ain't bad?

Delightful and Intelligent. Yes. (though delightful may be debatable).

Oh-so-well-behaved? Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor after I roll in fits of laughter.

O.M.G.

For those of you not familiar with internet lingo, "Oh. My. God."

OK, you readers with kids - you'll know what I mean. You know how it's simple to change your own babies' diapers, but changing the diapers of any other kid makes you gag? Well, the same logic may be applied to 10 year old boy behavior.

After 25 minutes of hearing every possible permutation of some physics computer program that apparently allows you to knock the heads and limbs off of unsuspecting block-people with anchored or unachored rectangular items or balls with some given velocity, I was forced to listen to the most inane arguments ever to be heard on the face of the earth. Then. Boy C, had the audacity to exclaim, "Boy, your van is REALLY REALLY messy!." (I bit my tongue and turned up the CD player.)
"I mean, GROSS! LOOK at all this trash!" (BTW, you know, I did attempt to take out the stale cheetoes and french fries before I went to get them. What does he expect? So there is a cupholder full of chrystalized syrup from a McDonalds breakfast someone ate a few years ago. With a plastic giraffe drowning in it. Get over it.)

Q jumped to my defense and started a heated argument about how cleanliness was boring. That messiness gives you interesting things to look at and keeps life fun. (I swear I'm not making this up - he came up with all of this on the fly and totally on his own. I love my son). Boy C wasn't buying it. "Well. *I* prefer for things to be neat and clean."

I delivered him home safely, I really did. And after stopping the throwing of balloons, the screaming, and the tears that commenced in the last 5 minutes before arrival, I forgot that my plan was to throw him out of the van into his perfectly manicured house at a speed of 25 mph as I sprayed gravel all over his perfectly manicured lawn.

But thank the heavens there's another week and a half left of this camp, so I'm sure I'll get my opportunity after all. Praise the gods of physics.