No, this isn't about some catty girl gang’s inter-personal dynamics; it's about kids who steal from their friends. More specifically, it's about two incidents when boys who were welcomed into our home, given food and drink, played in Morgan's room, show their appreciation by pocketing one or two of his video games and walking out the door. Smiling faces sometime…

The first theft occurred several years ago, when Roberto (remember sister Valerie?) made off with two PS2 disks. It had struck me odd that R had come over that afternoon with his games in a small zippered carrying case. He’d never brought more than one disk in its original plastic box. Within hours after he left, Morgan wanted to play GTA San Andreas and couldn’t find it.

And it snowballed from there. You know how it goes with a kid. He can’t find something. You tell him to look a little harder and maybe blow it off when the object of his desire still doesn’t turn up. But eventually the kid asks for help. And maybe you’re a little smug, figuring you’ll just walk in there and pull the rabbit outta the hat the way Moms are prone to do. But you can’t find it either and now it’s a quest.

We tore that little room apart. And as shamelessly messy as Morgan keeps it, he knows his game inventory. And two were gone. Period. We went over and over the events of the day. Roberto had the means, motive and opportunity. A circumstantial case, yes. But come on: They play the games. Roberto leaves. The games are gone. Go figure.

This is when Morgan’s Dad took over. He’s used to conflict. I get so mad, I’m afraid I’ll cry or kill somebody. Bill tries talking with Roberto (who is several years older than M) but it’s deny, deny, deny. He calls R’s mother, explains the situation, minimizes and says we understand how shit like this can happen. (Not really.) But no yelling, no threats. But, again, denial. His mom makes excuses for her son. Although she’s never adamant about his innocence, she doesn’t offer to cough up the 80-replacement-bucks either. We just dropped it and the friendship faded.

Earlier this week, same thing. Substitute Mitch (who claims to be a homeschooler), a winter coat, one Xbox 360 game, Jackass, Mitch’s father, 50-bucks. Except this time there was a reluctant witness to the theft. Even with Austin’s confirmation, nada. The Dad wouldn’t even wake up his son when Billy went knocking on their apt. door. Man.

The saddest thing? Once I was satisfied that the games really were MIA, there was never a moment when I didn’t think it was within the character of either of those Lost Boys to steal from Morgan. Yet I was willing to let Morgan befriend them and bring them into our home?

Who's really at fault here?

I was reading an article in my county newspaper about the impact of local overcrowded public schools. One frustration expressed was that because there aren't enough technical high schools, it's difficult for children (parents) to plan their (kid’s) right career track during middle and elementary schools. So what does that mean? Now you've gotta declare your major in fourth grade?

If my Westowne classmates and I had stuck with our career goals in fourth grade, the world would be full of veterinarians. Back then, nobody wanted to a Forensic Anthropologist or Personal Life Coach when they grew up.

In the old days, in seventh grade (or Junior High, remember?) you were either College Prep or Vo-Tech. The classes were organized by grade and then a letter. 7-A was the smartest kids in seventh grade taking French. 7-B was the smartest kids in seventh grade taking Spanish. (That was my class. But I got a D in Spanish.) And so on down to mid-alphabet, maybe K or M.

You changed rooms for each subject, but basically traveled with the same bunch of kids. We’d scatter for Band, Music, Gym and Home Ec or Shop. But regroup for the classes that counted towards college.

The students in 7-J took alotta noisy, kinda mysterious, door-closed classes in the basement. You never saw them in the Language Lab or the Science Hall. Those kids would have j-o-b-s before they graduated from high school, if they graduated from high school.

In our white-collar eyes, the Vocational Technologies kids were the dummies. In retrospect, perhaps they were the smart ones. While most of us were off pursuing a college education and a lofty career, they were working in the local gas station or restaurant. Now all of 7-J own those dealerships and franchises.

And some of us academia are still chasing the dragon.

Mine is “More.”

More food, more time, more bad habits, more stuff. Whatever it is, gimme more. If I consume it, I will feel full-filled. And it’s all my mother’s fault. Well, yeah, sorta. I mean, isn’t just about everything that makes us us traceable to nurture or nature? It’s never really our own fucking fault, right?

So when I, just like my mother before me, offer my overweight child more cake, maybe that’s not as good as it sounds. Although Pepperidge Farm Coconut 3-Layer Cake (when it’s still cold—but not frozen) sounds pretty darn good to me. And Morgan, just like his mother before him, understands the consequences of that second chuck of cake, but eats it anyway.

And when I give Morgan more time to play his Xbox 360 instead of doing schoolwork, I gotta wonder if his boss will give him more time to “Finish this level and Save,” before getting back to his j-o-b? Even panhandlers have to put in a few hours a day.

Now, in terms of bad habits, I thank the stars that I do not smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. Because I’d be a chain-smoking lush on the sofa, sippin’ on my big plastic cup of iced tea. Luckily any vice I may want to indulge, I can’t get more at the 24-hour Farm Store down the street. So the only advice I can give my kids is don’t start any bad habit you’re not prepared to have the rest of your miserable life.

My older son bought more Powell Peralta boards than he could skate. Of course, twenty years ago, I was bringing down a decent blue-collar union wage and could afford the deck and all its accoutrements. That was when a hundred dollars meant something. I still have one of Dallas’s large slogan buttons that reads “It’s not who you are, it’s what you wear.” As a reformed pre-teen fatty turned urban hipster, he knows that’s no joke.

“More,” I suspect, will always be part of my mothering mantra. Because I believe the only word worse than “More,’ is “No.”

Do you still have nightmares about not being able to find your school locker and even if you do eventually find it, you can’t remember the lock combination and even if you do eventually remember it, the damn door won’t open? And does the Late Bell just keeps ringing and ringing? Yeah, me too.

Before there was Middle School, there was seventh, eighth and ninth grades—Junior High. My reoccurring dream involves the putty-tan half lockers that lined the modern (circa 1967) Music Wing at CJHS. Unless you were coming up the stairs from gym, to get to your metal box with its built-in three-digit cipher, you had to veer off the first floor’s main drag, go down a few steps and then through a double set of double glass doors into the hallway. It got so congested; Safeties were assigned to enforce its entrance as One Way, going in. Like shiners into a minnow trap.

So every time I see yet another teenager TV sit-com set in front of a well-lit bank of well-decorated school lockers, I cringe. In junior high, getting to/fro one’s locker seemed like a crazy multi-floor version of musical chairs. By high school, you’d conquered class changes and could fit some make-out time between bells. But when you’re in seventh grade, it’s the stuff dreams are made of.

Yet Lizzie, Hannah, Raven, Zoey, Cory, Carly and their cronies seem to spend an inordinate amount of school time giggling and gossiping, plotting and planning in front of their lockers. I clicked past Nick TV’s, iCarly, just in time to see three boys rolling around like a snake ball in their Middle School’s hallway. In my (not the) day, kids got suspended for that kind of behavior, not a laugh track.

Fortunately Morgan’s never been taken in by the taking of artistic license. But more than one young homeschooler, especially, it seems, eight-year-old girls, has been brain-washed into believing that’s really what public school is like and beg to be a part of the show. Bratz dolls in training bras.

A union man understands responsibility. Even if he’s not Mr. Dependable at home, at work, he knows that’s what it’s all about. Like the Hokey-Pokey. You learn it early or not at all.

So I took great comfort in tonight’s visit from my former theatre union’s Business Agent. He brought some money, more freelance work and alotta laughs. Bruce and I were sworn into the local together and we reminisce about our apprentice years with great humor. We were told to “Be on time, have your tools and keep your mouth shut.” And I kept my promise to the head carpenter at the Mechanic that he’d never see tears from me (the first/only female member in Local 19 during the 80s.)

Throughout our meeting, Bruce’s cell phone kept ringing with calls from members and shop stewards. Some wanna work. Some can’t work. And one didn’t show up for work. That’s a major no-no. The steward called, the guy’s 20 minutes late. “Replace him,” says Bruce. Next. Even if he shows up, he can just turn around and go home. No argument. No excuses.

How do you think those rules would work with a homeschool group? Twenty minutes late is par for the course with some Moms. Others are no shows without acknowledgement or apologies. And the excuse of a sick kid or dead dog, even if you’d run over it trying to get to the co-op on time, would be of no consequence.

Tools? A #2 pencil perhaps? Don't count on it. In the IA, nobody liked to lend his tools. You had what you needed on your tool belt. You didn’t bring extra to share. No roadie wants to hear “Wait!” to take up a pipe while you and another guy share a wrench.

Keep your mouth shut? Who are you kidding? Men are the chatty sex, but at least they pay attention while they’re bullshitting. And no matter how angry one might get with another, even coming to blows (off the clock), they’d still work shoulder-to-shoulder as brothers, when “Let’s go to work,” rang out.

No tears? No homeschool activity is complete without at least one hissy fit or meltdown. And it’s not always a kid’s.

If Home Educators had a union, I’d file a grievance and some Moms would have their cards pulled.

Okay, riddle me this: If your family were going to an art glass studio to make a glass marble or a glass flower, what would be the operative word in that sentence? Maybe, ah, glass? And if you were bringing your 4-year-old, 2-year-old AND 1-year-old to the activity, what would be your major concern? Maybe, ah, glass? No, apparently not.

Because soon after I posted to the homeschool group thanking the organizer and warning tomorrow’s class to watch their little kiddos because the artist has finished pieces spread out in his adjoining office and that it would be unfortunate if someone wound up having to pay for making glass shards, another mother posted that, moments after my family left, her daughter (the 2-year-old) had indeed broken a glass orb in his office. Punctuated with: LOL.

Come on, is it me? (Well, yeah, it is…) But first of all, would you even TAKE three children that wobbly into a warehouse with an open furnace, a huge hot oven and hundreds of glass objects? Well, if you’re a preschool-homeschool hipster with your baby in sling you sure would. And that this post-teen could characterize her irresponsibility, her daughter’s accident and the destruction of somebody else’s shit a laughing-out-loud moment, it frightens me. Seriously.

The real LOL irony is, when I posted my original caveat, it was based on watching that very cutie wander more than once in and out of the office on her own accord. Parents oblivious to her travels. Only once did I witness that “Shit, where is my kid?” realization/panic flash across the face of her father, who then prompted his wife, who went off looking—outside. (I’ll give her that: a squashed kid is worse than a broken vase.) Mom eventually scooped her up. But I guess nothing was learned by that second kick of the mule.

It’s a thin line between unschooled and unsupervised.

Out of the mouth of babes, or in this case, a teenager. The morning after the New Hampshire primary, when I told M that Hillary had won. "You've got to be kidding me," was his immediate response. Without skipping a beat, he concluded, "Crying works." But that’s my fault.

I’ve warned my son about women. Yeah, so did Norman Bates’ mom. But we all know the games girls play. I’ve played’em. You’ve played’em. Or they’ve been played on you. But the head-trips us baby boomers learned from Beach Blanket Bingo seem like simple math compared to the complex Sudoku mind-benders I’ve seen on Disney Channel’s current sit-coms. It’s not our same old Mickey Mouse Club, that’s for sure.

But Disney has been twisting our teens for decades. Morgan and I are about two-third through reading The Swiss Family Robinson (which is a hoot—between the bonking of wild animals, access to their luxury-laden wreckage, and the father’s ingenuity and OCD.) Recently, the 1960 Disney film version was on TV, so we watched it as an exercise in contrast and compare. What a difference 150 years make!

The four boys had merged into three. And although we haven’t finished the novel, I don’t seem to remember any love triangle with the two oldest boys, Fritz and Ernst, competing for the affections of any rescued-from-pirates girl. In fact, I don’t remember a girl or any pirates at all! But in the movie, the two young bucks engage in fisticuffs over this fictitious female.

Now that’s power, baby. You can get any guy to fuck you. But to get him to fuck (over) some other guy, that’s how girls really get off. In both the book and the movie, the boys banter but never come to blows. Yet, per Disney, once that girl hits the beach, conflict flourishs. By all appearances, the female character had more in common with the younger brother, Ernst. But apparently James “Book’em Danno” MacArthur was a bigger teen heartthrob than Tommy Kirk, so he got the girl. And how did she accomplish all this chaos? By crying.

Guess Hillary saw the same movie.

This Summer, Morgan progressed from checking out skimpily clad Wrestling Divas to ogling naked Hotties online. I figured as much, having glimpsed the porno progression during my walk-bys. He caught my drift with my “Don’t use the Green Dot card for any of that.” But when I opened my laptop and the "Boobies That Make You Say Damn" website popped up, well, we just had to have The Talk.

No, Morgan already knows where babies come from. I mean the talk about pornography. Now, I gotta admit, I like big titties as much as the next guy, but Damn was right. I thought those girls were grappling with the runners-up from the state fair’s largest watermelon contest. Too much of a good thing, even for me. So I figured before his search led him any deeper into dark places he doesn’t need to go (yet), I’d start him off with everybody’s “men’s entertainment” training wheels—Playboy.

And, yes, you should read it for the articles. That 1980 interview with John Lennon sure was a timely gift and a keeper. The writing is an introduction into the world of liberal views, sexual basics and bawdy humor. Unlike cigarettes, sexual titillation isn’t gonna kill you. No matter what your grandmother might have told you.

Excuse my flippancy, but I want my children to understand that sex, in all of its consensual forms, can be just plain fun. I also made it clear that everybody masturbates. Just close the door and don’t make alotta noise when you do it.

So Playboy magazine covers a lot of those bases without my 13-year-old son having to squirm through hearing the nuances from me. To cut back on any embarrassment on his part, I even let his Dad buy and give it to him. I concluded The Talk by conceding that no matter what a girl tells you, she DOES want to be viewed as a Sex Object.

So Santa brought him a year’s subscription.

To begin with, Morgan doesn’t understand why George W. just can’t keep on being President. He realizes the guy couldn’t win in a general election. But M does think we should give him four more years. What’s wrong with that?

The depth of my son’s conviction is so clear (and verbal) that a friend brought M an 8x10 color photo he took of Bush at the 2006 NAACP Convention. It’s framed and still proudly displayed in M’s bedroom. Seriously, don’t bad mouth George in front of my kid.

So how did this Libertarian, once a “bleeding-heart, do-gooder Democrat,” raise a Republican? Believe me, I ask myself that question every time I have to click off Keith Olbermann’s commentary when Morgan’s in the room. We’re both yelling at the TV, for different reasons. But Morgan wants me to be clear, he is NOT a Republican, he just likes Bush.

Okay, come on, cut the kid some slack. He’s only 13. His first real “political” memory is watching a Boeing 767 slam through the World Trade Center. Over and over again. And although the human tragedy of that day and all the days that followed still doesn’t really register, the consequences and repercussions of the event certainly has: The War in Iraq.

And in that regard, George W. is like any other boy playing Army. Never quit. Never surrender. Only difference is Bush can be a bully and get away with it. Gotta love that.

So it’s been with Morgan’s somewhat disinterest that I’ve tried to give him a last minute, 25-words-or-less overview of the Iowa caucuses. Truth was, a few months ago, even a few weeks ago, it seemed a non-issue. And now look.

Morgan will be happy to hear Hillary (ABC) lost. But he’s gonna shit when I tell him that Huckabee was a Baptist preacher! And Chuck Norris won’t help his case, either.