My middle child, Billy, who is now 16, seemingly has only a few simple aims in life:
- To torment and embarrass his older sister, Elle
- To torment and pick on his younger brother, Harry
- To break the world record for sitting on his arse in front of the x box
I adore him,as I do all of my children of course. He is helpful to me which is a nice bonus for a mother He is also hilariously funny which can be difficult because most of his quick wit is directed at one of his siblings and apparently you get motherhood demerit points if you laugh at a joke made at the expense of one of your other children. I have been known to almost have an aneurism holding in a laugh while pretending to be cross with him.
Just recently though he pulled a beauty.
I was driving him home from school when I received a text from my current spouse (I call him that just to keep him on his toes). He had had a grievous injury to his pinky finger some time ago which had required weeks of visits to a hand clinic. . Well that's what he called it. The text excitedly announced 'last visit to the hand clinic'. I handed the phone to Billy and, trying to be responsible while driving, asked him to reply 'excellent news' to his father. This seemed to take a bit longer than two words but I assumed he was having trouble spelling one of the two words.
Within seconds of him putting the phone down it rang. When I say rang I mean there was a sound of a dog barking which is the ring tone I have assigned to my spouse. I didn't get a chance to speak. He was clearly panic stricken. It went something like this 'what did you say? We're really going to have to think about how we handle this. I suppose with three kids on the law of averages we were always going to have to deal with it with one of them '
I calmly said I had no idea what he was talking about- that Billy had typed the text he received from me.
Silence - then Billy started to laugh. Uncontrollable, evil, body shaking laughter. Spouse asked me first if youngest son Harry was in the car, which he wasn't, and to put the phone on speaker and, through what seemd like tears of laughter, said 'Billy, I don't know whether to kill you or congratulate you'. I started laughing not knowing what I was laughing at but knew it had to be good. He told me that the text he received from me was 'Excellent news. And by the way I meant to tell you that Harry told me today he is confused about his sexuality '. Harry is 11 by the way.
I started to laugh. I had to pull the car over to the side of the road. Spouse was laughing so hard I thought he was starting to hyper ventilate. Billy was in heaven - it was such an excellent prank. Gold.
Harry is a sensitive soul being the youngest of three and also based on years of put downs and being picked on by his siblings. He can never know - he would think we were laughing at him. But we were laughing at Billy thinking of this brilliant prank in a nano second and his father's reaction. I am proud of my husband - as panicked as he was, it was about how to handle a supportive discussion with our youngest child.
We are still laughing about it days later - excellent prank. I am so proud. But we can't tell Harry
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