Boys and Girls

DISCLAIMER:  I realize it's risky to make generalizations about everything and anything.

Okay.  Now that we have that out of the way, I've been thinking a little about the experience of raising sons and how that experience differed from my neighbor Kathy's, because Kathy had girls, except for Nate, who is definitely NOT a girl although he does like Diet Coke, which I do think of as primarily a girl drink.

See?  Stereotyping is obviously alive and well at this house.

Anyway, it did seem to me as I watched our kids grow up together that little girls mature more quickly than little boys--verbally, socially, physically.  One of my favorite examples of this involves my youngest son.   Here's what happened.

One day the school's visiting writer-in-residence showed up in his first grade class (I was there helping that morning) with the expressed purpose of inspiring the kids to expand their minds, etc.  To this end she showed the kids a series of pictures and asked them what the pictures reminded them of.   After viewing the photo of a landscape, one little girl went into raptures.

"It reminds me of the kind of morning when a unicorn would step outside and take a sip of dew."

BTW I'm not making that up.  She was all about "unicorns" and "sips of dew."

Anyway.  I watched Q go slackjaw.  He was blown away by this little girl and her awesome answer.  You could see him decide right then and there that HE was gonna impress her right back.  So when the writer held up another photo--this one showing a cup of hot chocolate--Q practically flew out of his seat, he was raising his hand so hard.

"What does this remind you of, Q?"  The writer asked.

"It reminds me of . . . HOT.  And also . . . CHOCOLATE."

This is one of my favorite memories ever of my youngest son.  And every time I think of it, I can only say rock on, Q.  Rock on.