Clover Autrey

My twelve year old is definitely a Millennial.  

He loves technology, understands, takes it apart and rewires it. After myself, my husband, and my two oldest boys have all tried to simply get the TV back onto the TV after watching Netflix here on the Wii, we must eventually call T down to fix it, which he does with a I-can't-believe-you-can't-do-this shake of his head and two seconds later it's done. Of course since he has rewired everything where only a Mage of the Thirteenth Level can figure it out, I'm thinking it's not because I'm too old to get it. He's even gone to his friend's house where their cable has been out for days and inspects their router and fixes the problem. His brain functioning in this is a little frightening. I only hope he learns to use his power for good.

Anyway, the gamer's ultimate game Minecraft is T's passion. He loves it. I've heard him explaining how to set things up in there with the exasperation of an old man. He has his own Minecraft server.

"What is a server?" I ask.

"So people can go to my server and play the game through my server even when I'm not there."

"And why is that important?"

"Ah, Mom. You just don't get it."

He's right. I don't get it at all. But I helped him get his server. He's thrilled with it and feels important.

Needless to say, he's on his server, playing Minecraft alot, leading his friends through the worlds as they play together through their headphones.

So hearing him talking in his headphones is a normal occurrence at our house. However, yesterday, the talking seemed different, less action, more monotone when I passed. So being the nosy-must-know-everything-that-my-kid-is-doing-on-the-Internet type Mom, I ducked my head in.

He was reading.

About four of his friends were all on CreepyPasta (at their own homes with headphones) taking turns reading these scary stories.

My son who doesn't like reading.
My son who has dyslexia.
My son was taking the lead, reading out loud to his friends who were all reading along together because "reading the stories alone is too scary". Like one of his friends could reach through the monitor and save him.

I'm thrilled. Yes, reading. I want my kids to have a love of reading! Does it matter that it is urban legend scare-your-pants-off stuff? No. Who doesn't like those? Am I ready to start thrusting books in T's face like Nightlife because if he likes Jeff the Killer, he'd love Slashback. Then again, I know I can't get too pushy, too let's-bond-over-this right this second, kay, kay?

So I closed the door, did a quiet knuckle-tap (which I know, yeah, yeah, fifty-year-olds aren't suppose to do--not cool) and am letting the bond-over-this opportunities come natural as I  leave my copies of Rob Thurman's book out in surreptitious locations. Oh that? It's just a book about monsters with sharp metal teeth who can open up doorways to other worlds... Kinda scary though.
 

My son. He's tall and handsome, fourteen, and growing like a tree. A thin gangly palm tree that delights in dropping coconuts on his younger brother's head simply because he can. His feet and hands are huge, showing there's still much more growing to do.

It's the first day of spring break, that magical first Monday of sleeping in and not having to get up and rush off to school. The boys are happily in their various control towers bedrooms, catching up on lost video game time and Minescape on the kid's specified computer. "That's Minecraft, mom", my youngest is always keen to point out. "You're mixing it with Runescape again."

I'm in my office-slash-bedroom, working on a group sale I volunteered to coordinate (don't ask), when Palm Tree son comes in. He's giving me that one eye half-closed and head tilted look. Uh-oh.

"Uh, Mom, I think I accidentally called 911."

"What? Why?"

"Well, I didn't mean to. My phone just called them and I looked at it and noticed it was connected to someone, so I said, 'uh, hello?' Then this guy answers, 'This is 911 emergency, we are hearing gunfire and screaming from your location. Is everything all right?"

I'm alarmed. "What were you playing? So, are they coming here?"

"Uh, no, I told them what happened. They wanted to know exactly what game I was playing. Mom, they were like listening for half an hour."

"What were you playing?"

battlefield.com

"Battlefield 3."

Oh man. I shrink in on myself a little bit, taking in the facts that a 911 Operator is listening on my son's cell phone for half an hour to army guys bombing and rapidly firing at each other. Can I hope that the operator has figured out he's listening to a game? Or is he frantically trying to pinpoint the cell phone's location?

An hour goes by so I assume any issued alerts have been canceled. I need to make a pharmacy run so off I go. On the way back, PT boy calls my cell, "Um, Mom. The police just came to our house."

"What?" After an hour and a half? "Are you making this up?" Normally that would seem like a mean question under the circumstances, but it isn't beyond my son to make crazy scenarios up because he's a natural joker and loves to get a reaction out of me. He got a reaction out of me, but this time it was sincere. How do I know? Because he also can't maintain a lie for more than two minutes. His expressive face shows way too much delight at having got me once again.

"No, I swear. It's all cool though. I told them what happened."

"Did they come in to check it out?" I imagine police officers wanting to see the offending x-box and loud game, tromping up the stairs to the bedrooms even as I'm trying to remember what the condition of the kitchen was before I left.

"No. There were like 3 squad cars outside. The guy that came to the door had his hand on his gun." Well, that must have been exciting for a fourteen-year-old. He told me later he crept to the door ninja-style as the knocking was really loud.  Sigh. This doesn't bode well for the rest of spring break.

Lesson taken away from this: Don't butt-dial the police when you are playing Battlefield 3.

I'm on the phone with some cable tech, since, well, our cable was out. It was a minor fix of having to reset the battery of the router box. Just unplug the power cord, take out the battery, wait two minutes and plug everything back in.

No big deal. Except the box is in the garage behind a shelf with a bunch of Christmas decoration boxes and the electrical outlet is on the ceiling by the garage opener mechanisms.

And a freakin spider as big as my palm--no exaggeration--is on the floor between the two!

I'm moving boxes and ladders and hopping back and forth between the two with a cell phone on speaker with tech guy explaining what I'm to do while I'm explaining to him how freaked out I am by this monstrosity of a spider eyeballing me.

Battery recharged and cable guy asks me to go inside and check the reception. I politely ask him to hold on a minute and grab the closest baseball. It happens to be aluminum.

I can only imagine tech dude grinning as he hears clang after clang of aluminum striking cement while me and superspider head off. Man that thing was quick, but I had a longer reach.

Not going into the garage barefoot anymore . . .