A Boy Can

Harry stared down the bowl of alphabet soup, blowing on the steamy morsels until the words, ‘a boy can’ appeared.

Bobbing about in a soothing brown ocean, the letters seemed on the verge of telling him something important.

“A boy can what?” he wondered aloud

“A boy can stop staring at his soup,” said his mother. “It’s getting cold.”

The letters lay warm on his tongue before sliding down his gullet and demanding another mouthful.

“A boy can help with the dishes and take out the garbage, “ said his Dad.

“A boy can also stop going through his sister’s underwear drawer,” said his older sister Sara. “I don’t even want to know what goes on in that putrid little mind of yours while you’re doing it! Ewww!”

A boy can also learn to keep his big mouth shut, thought Harry.

“Enough picking on Harry,” said his dad. “Harry, can you do me a favor after dinner?”

“Sure Dad,” said Harry.

“Go up to your room and finish your book report. You’ve been stalling all week.”

“What happened to ‘enough picking on Harry?’”

“Just do it,” said his dad. “I don’t know what’s so hard about it. You read the book. You absorb the book. You mull it over in that wonderful head of yours. You form an opinion and you write it down. It’s not complicated.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Harry. “You didn’t have to read Ancient Articulations on a Dying Diety in the seventh grade. The only useful thing I got out of that book was a good nap half way through the first paragraph.”

“Well, grab yourself a Coke on your way up then,” said his dad. “And read it again.”

“Great.” said Harry. “Just great.”

Harry sat himself at his desk and booted up his computer.

“And no Googling!” his dad shouted up. “I’ll know if you did! So don’t!”

Let’s see, calculated Harry, in another six years I’ll be eighteen and legal. Then I won’t have to do what I don’t want to do. I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. Oh, it is going to be so sweet not to have to listen to anyone tell me how to do the things I didn’t want to do in the first place. Sweet indeed.