High Drama!

My son Thing 2 -- the nine-year-old -- got a call from a girl this evening! (And this on top of Thing 1 telling us, for the last three weekends running, that a female friend of his from middle school is going to come over to play games together sometime Sunday afternoon. That hasn't happened yet, but my boys are definitely growing up, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for it.)

Thing 2's friend wanted to play on Club Penguin with him, so I had to help him log in and find the right server -- how weird is it that even MUDs for pre-teens have "meet me on my server" issues? -- and then I left him alone, lying on the bed, phone up to one ear and my laptop in front of him.

Sometime later, when I went to gently remind him he needed a shower before bed, he was a flight of stairs away, crying. As he put it, he was "typing in random letters" and "accidentally" sent a bad word, which got him banned from Club Penguin. I calmed him down, told him I'd see what I could do to fix it, and sent him to the showers. (It turned out that the "banning" is only for 24 hours.)

It's nice to know that kids never change, isn't it?