Letter From a Son

"Dear loving mother," began the typed letter that lay on top of my keyboard when I returned home from work at 10:30 Tuesday night. The letter was from the son who went to bed the night before after spewing vitriole about his brother and me and his horrible life. The son who pulled the old door closed tight rather than leaving it open to hear the sounds of life throughout the house like he usually did.
Perhaps he wrote to apologize. Please, don't be naive. There's only one reason for a letter that begins like this: he wrote to ask for something.
"I am yearning for the newest experience in the world of first person shooter video games..." he wrote. I suppose a boy who yells and slams the door should be encouraged to play shooter video games.
He pointed out that his grades had improved and he had gone to swim practices and he had started mentoring -- all steps for the better this year. And I had to agree, if it hadn't been for the outburst the day before. The outburst really didn't have anything to do with me or his brother. It had to do with the new Xbox game coming out at midnight and he would not be in line to get it.
His "improved behavior" this fall, he admitted, was a ploy to receive the video game.
"This may be because of hopes to get the game as an early Christmas present, as so when I get the game, I will not be referred to as a 'noob' by all my friends and other online players," he wrote.
He then included the cost and a list of stores where we could easily find the game.
"I feel this would be a righteous investment on your part to see the smiling face of your ever so loving child as you hand him this glorious gift of Call of Duty Black Ops..."
Ah, yes. The lure of Xbox live which offers the ability to talk to your friends as if they are sitting in the same room with you when, in fact, they are in their own homes playing Black Ops. A boy never has to leave the basement to be surrounded by his buddies.

These were simpler days when Tucker was content to dress as a tiger while Spencer played at Johnny Tremaine and Grace posed as Hermione from Harry Potter.

I intend to get the game for Tucker, violence and all, as a Christmas present. I just don't see the need to rush out on release night to snatch it up. All of his friends have it, he claimed, today at lunch when I picked up him and four friends.
I drove them back to our house for lunch meat and cheese on sub buns, apple slices, Sun Chips, homemade brownies, M&Ms and Orange Crush. They each made their own sandwich and sat around the table.
"Owen, do you have it?" I asked. He shook his head.
"Sam?" He doesn't even have an Xbox. Two of the boys have the new game. Both said they bought it with money they had saved.
They tell of one boy at school who got the game when it was released at midnight and then played the game until 5 in the morning. He is grounded.
"I truly hope you rethink your decision twice over before you decide what you may," Tucker wrote in the letter to me. I suppose he thought my decision would be no, so if I rethought twice then a double negative would make a positive.
I showed the letter to Earl this morning.
"Send him a letter that says the committe will make a decision by Dec. 23," he said.
And he drove the boys back to school before 5th period started while I put away the sandwich fixings and the uneaten apple slices.
Tucker's friends go out for lunch everyday, he says. He takes his brown bag and goes along with them.
Eating out everyday and buying pre-Christmas presents just seems excessive. My kids already are so privileged. They've never been hungry because we don't have enough food. They have cell phones and fast internet connection. They have a television in the basement just for video games. They have plenty. Tucker can take one for the team this time.
Then Tucker goes home with his friend Josh to play Black Ops on the split screen. "This game is amazing," he says. Josh has two copies -- one for the upstair Xbox and one for the downstairs Xbox.
The bar for privileged keeps rising, but I don't have to keep jumping.

Mr. Capable

Like many middle class mothers, I have raised my children to be too dependent on me. The boys stand and scratch their heads when I tell them to do laundry, in spite of the fact that I've shown them half a dozen times. They seem unsure how to cook macaroni and cheese or how to print off their essays for school, much less save them to the flash drive.
Turning to mom for help is all well and fine, unless it's something really important.
Last week, in the midst of finals, the internet slowed down. It was taking forever to download an essay before I could grade it, and I was frustrated.
Tucker noticed the problem with his XBox too. He uses the XBox Live, which connects him with his friends who are also on XBox Live.
We gave the XBox to Spencer last fall for his birthday but Tucker purchased the XBox live subscription and spends any spare hours on it. Spencer only gets on XBox rarely in between basketball practices, watching sports on TV and hanging out with his friends.
Along with the internet problem, the XBox kept spitting out disks and saying they weren't compatible.
"If you'd just come look at it," Tucker urged. He wanted to show me that it was so slow he couldn't enter the games with his friends.
"It's still under warranty, you know," he said.
That's right, I realized. I could send it back to have it fixed. I promised I would eventually look for the receipt and the warranty so we could have the XBox repaired, but I didn't have time for it during finals week.
A few hours later Tucker came upstairs and laid two pieces of paper on the desk beside my computer.
"What's this?" I asked.
"That's the UPS shipping label to send the XBox in. I registered it, described the problem, and printed out the shipping label. They'll cover the shipping too. All you have to do is box it up and send it."
My son, who can't get off the couch to fix a piece of toast, was suddenly capable of much more when it came time to resolve something important -- to him.