Boy, Crazy

In what used to be a guest room in my home, I have a dresser drawer labeled "Spy Gear," and another marked "Weaponry."

No, I haven't joined some paramilitary group nor am I a secret double agent Angelina-Jolie-type-movie-character spy disguised as an ordinary suburban mom.

The dresser is in our guest room-turned play room, and I am just an ordinary mom of three young, active boys. In fact, I remember long before becoming a mother I said I wouldn't allow toy guns in my home.

And just yesterday I told my oldest son that walking by his and his brothers' bathroom makes me want to barf. He asked me what 'barf' meant, and I said I was shocked he didn't yet know all the synonyms for throwing up. At that point, his visiting friend and I came up with about eight different ways to say 'puke.'

And I laughed at the fact I just initiated a conversation about vomiting, and wondered, "How did I get here?"

This certainly wasn't my plan, being married 13 years (to the same man) with three boys, a house in the suburbs, volunteering at my kids' Sunday School.

Nope. I vividly remember an essay I wrote in 6th grade. I don't remember the assignment exactly, but it must have had something to do with 'what I wanted to be when I grew up.'

I wrote that I was going to be foreign correspondent for a major newspaper (c'mon, this was the late 70s when newspapers were relevant), get married and have twin girls (always was interested in efficiency and figured two kids, one pregnancy = smart) but have a nanny or a husband who stayed home with the girls while I trotted across the globe covering war and uncovering scandal, exposing scoundrels.

My teacher, Miss Wall, gave me a decent grade but commented in the margins that I shouldn't try to be so specific, that we don't necessarily have control over everything in our lives. She warned that thinking we had such control would only lead to disappointment.

Then there was college. I could have earned a minor in Women's Studies given the number of classes I took in that department. All the literature I read and lectures I listened to about changing the world, about not settling for the status quo, about not doing the things society expected of me, just because society expected it.

Those lessons, along with other life lessons, created a person who, when I met my husband, was not going to get married. I certainly was not going to have children. (He likes to remind me of this every once in a while; he thinks it is very funny.)

But I did marry him, and after many years filled with foreign travel and rat racing, we did have a child. Liked him so much we adopted another. Then had another after him.

I haven't given up on changing the world, however. I have three smart and talented boys to raise into status quo-bucking, rule-breaking, society-influencing men -- three men who will know how to clean their own bathroom.

Their first lesson begins promptly at 7 a.m. tomorrow.