I’ve grown used to some aspects of having a male teenager in the house. I’ve learned that his eructations are to be scored, judged, ranked on account of tonal quality, duration, and, of course, aroma. Should I play the part of the Russian judge, he vehemently protests: “Are you kidding? That was my best burp all week!”

I’ve also learned that things are different now than they were when I was a kid. In my day (ha!), we liked to be outside, playing kickball or basketball or stockpiling rocks to throw at the stinky kid. But now, stinky kids are cool, thereby forcing the others to find amusement in what I regard as some of the strangest pastimes. Or maybe it’s not all kids who are like this, but I can assure you, it is the case for mine.

Just last month, we were spending a Saturday evening at home, waiting for the magic time when I am ordered into the kitchen to stir up something tasty for Lord Plushbottom. I’d walked off towards the kitchen en route to perform one of my other motherly duties just about the time my son entered the living room. The local news was blaring from the tv when he screamed “Dang, Mom!” As I came back into the room, he said, “We miss all of the fun—now we’ve missed Shred-a-Thon!” and he pointed at the tv.

Yes, indeed, I know I should be ashamed but yes, I had, yet again, deprived my son of the family fun of loading up our car with bags and bags of personal documents and hauling them off to some televised “event” where strangers promise to take our stuff and shred it to smithereens.

“I’m sorry, son, I just don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I’ve gotten to that age where I just don’t recognize fun anymore” I sighed, about the same time the smiling blonde on the tv said, “At our last event, over fifty people showed up!”

“Did you hear that, Mom? Over fifty people!”

“Crazy, huh, in a town the size of the ‘Ham.”

“I know, Mom, I know. There’s more than fifty people in Birmingham AND there were more than fifty people who showed up—so it sounds like we’re the only ones who keep missing out.” His shoulders slumped and his head dropped and, looking towards the floor, he slunk off towards his room. “We never do anything,” he mumbled as he closed his door.

I checked on him a few minutes later and he’d fallen asleep, his television still tuned to his acclaimed hero, Suzukiman, who was busily hawking used cars while wearing a multi-colored poncho, his sombrero hiding his face.

My son delights, I think, in making me believe him to be offbeat, campy, maybe weird, to the point that he forgets that it’s a game. I think. I hope. But that he approaches problems from, er, a perspective that’s, um, just a bit different than mine isn’t making me so secure in my belief that this is just a phase.

Like a few weeks ago.

As I was about to go shower for work, I saw him outside with a bedsheet. His bedsheet. Not one of the old ones on the living room floor that the dog drags around. Not one of the ones stored in stacks in the bottom of his closet. But the one from his own damned bed. The one upon which he’d sleep every night if he actually slept at night…instead, he sleeps on it during the day. When the rest of us are wide awake.

I asked, as any loving mother would, what in the fuck he thought he was doing. He sighed and then patiently explained that he was getting a ball off the roof. He'd tried the water hose, he'd tried a broom, and, he argued, there was obviously nothing else left to try except the bedsheet. His bedsheet. The one right off his bed. Obviously.

I warned him that it would get dirty, that it would tear on the gutter.

Nonsense, he argued. Moms, they have the craziest notions, he said aloud. Medication is what they need.

But I had neither the time nor the energy to do battle so I went towards the bathroom…but before I could get there, he shouted through the screen door "I got it! AND the sheet didn't rip and it never hit the ground--and even though you doubted me, I’m not even gonna say 'I told you so!'"

“You’re weird,” I replied.

“You’re only jealous because I have the ball,” and he held it up, an elderly, dry-rotted, near-death Nerf basketball, one so old that between the sun, old age, and the cat’s claws, it had no color left.

“Ah, indeed, and it does appear to be worthy of my jealousy.”

“I know, Mom, but maybe if you come out here with your sheets, you can fish one down from the roof too.”

But I know that, as much as he was trying to tempt me, to bait me outside in my boxers and my tee with the promise of something about which I couldn't care less, had I gone out there, he’d have taken pictures of me, then laughed the rest of the day.

I’d almost forgotten that until last night, when he was lying on the couch opposite of where I was sitting as we were watching the news together. Now to live with my son, you have to grow used to the fact that, outside of seemingly regular gaseous eruptions, he’s, overall, pretty quiet. Until.

So I’ve grown used to the rhythm of our silence, of sitting in the same room with another human being and, outside of seeing him move periodically, having no real proof of his consciousness. Except.

And then.

Oh my.

The news was coming to a close and, as a postscript to the sports segment, they aired some feel-good footage from a local wheelchair basketball game. I watched my son. And waited.

I knew it was coming but what and when was my concern.

So I watched him.

He focused on the tv, his eyes squinting as he raised from his prostrate position so as to be closer to the tv. And he said nothing. His lips didn’t even move. I waited, I assure you, for the smile, but, it, too, never came.

The credits started to scroll across the screen and, given that he’d resumed his recumbent sprawl across the couch, I’d given up the wait for what I’d presumed would be a…

“Hey Mom, where are you going?”

“Into the kitchen to start supper.”

“But I was thinking about those guys playing basketball…y’know…the ones in the wheelchairs?”

Aha! I knew it! “What about them?”

“Well, if they built those guys some ramps, it would be easier for them to dunk!”

“DYLAN!”

“What? It would be a lot more interesting to watch too…”

But by then, I’d forced myself to walk off, feeling so terribly guilty for laughing so hard. The visual was so cruelly, inappropriately hysterical. And my son, I think, was being serious.