Once in a while – or, often, once a day – one of the guys will say something that really floors me.

But nothing either had uttered in their entire lives had prepared me for the words that flew out of Big Guy’s mouth last night.

“You know, Momma, it’s not so bad having a brother,” he proclaimed as they got ready for bed.

I tried to stop my eyebrow from arching and willed the grin out of my voice. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Because if I didn’t have a brother, I wouldn’t have anyone to play tag with or to chase or to run with or to play towel-a-bunga with.”

Uh, what the heck is towel-a-bunga?

“That’s where we attack each other with the towels after our bath,” Big Guy said. So that explains the slapping and giggling I hear every night when they’re upstairs and I’m downstairs packing lunches. No one has ever complained, so I’ve never investigated. At least that mystery was solved.

The mystery of this era of brotherly goodwill, however, was not.

“Yeah, I like having a brother, too,” added Boots, who just hours earlier was alternately asking me to “give Big Guy to another family” or “put him in the trash.” The comments were the perfect comeback to Big Guy’s dreamy longing for the good old days when he was an only child – as if he can remember a lot from his first two years.

“I like having someone to play Mario with, and to play soldier with,” Boots added, conveniently forgetting all the times those very games have ended in brawls.

As for me, I just nodded and agreed. I tried not to smile, because that would have ruined it.

And sometime today, when arms and legs are flailing and screaming is reaching intolerable decibel levels, I’ll try not to mention it because they’d just deny it.

But I know deep down how they really feel. It’s nice to hear them admit it once in a while.

Copyright 2010 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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