Things a 13 Year Old Boy Says (Part II)

The boys are gone, and I'm left with lots of memories that make me smile, and a couple that make me laugh out loud.  Like the time when Matthew was helping me with dinner and accidentally launched a piece of chicken across my kitchen (the look on his face was priceless).  Or the time when I was giving Aaron a hard time about cramming the dishwasher so full that the dishes didn't get clean, and THEN I found out that Steven had loaded it.  Oops!  Sorry, Steven...thanks for helping!  But my favorite story happened last Wednesday at the Fort Worth Zoo.  Now, there are two things that must be understood before I tell you what happened.

1) If (God forbid!) something were to happen to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Aaron and I will be the legal guardians of three teenagers.  Because of our struggles with infertility there were a lot of jokes over the last couple of weeks involving putting a hit out on Chris and Michelle so we could get the insurance money and have an instant family.  We even discussed what ridiculous things we would do with the insurance money.  We're sick and twisted like that.

2) My sister-in-law hates snakes.  She hates them.  They make her cringe and break out in a cold sweat and run like a crazy woman in the opposite direction.  Matthew, on the other hand, loves snakes and anything that creeps, crawls, wiggles, squirms, or otherwise gives his mother the heebie-jeebies.

So imagine, if you will, a family on vacation at the Fort Worth Zoo.  Of course, the 13 year old wants to head directly for the reptile/insect house, and of course, his mother is not thrilled about the idea but goes along because she loves her kids.  She also agrees to go along because it's September 1st in Fort Worth, TX and it's hotter than Hades...and the reptile/insect house is air-conditioned.  And apparently the rest of the zoo visitors have the same idea because the place is packed.  The concrete walls echo with shouts of little excited children and shrieks of digust from their mothers.  In the corner of the room is a large, gigantic, enormous, warehouse-size glass cage that houses the biggest python I've ever laid eyes on.  Seriously, that sucker was huge!  Which meant my nephew was standing there with this mouth gaping open, and my sister-in-law was rapidly moving in the other direction.  Then...over the noise and chaos of the crowded room...I hear my nephew's voice yell:

"Hey, Aunt Sarah!  When my parents die and we get the insurance money will you buy me a cage and a snake like this?"

Needless to say, the room got significantly quieter and lots of heads turned in our direction.

I think I'm now on the FBI's watch list.  Thanks, Matthew.