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Over the past few days, I’ve spent my evenings watching The Matrix Trilogy with my little sister. She’d never seen them before and always used to make fun of my brothers and I when we watched them in the past. Yet this time around, she joined in on the viewing and absolutely loved them.

My little sister loves The Matrix Trilogy. My eleven year old sister actually cared whether or not Morpheus died or what was up with the Oracle or if Neo could beat Smith. And to that, I say this:

My family rocks.

I just got back from spending a few days down in South Carolina. The main purpose of the trip was to be there for Waynus’ high school graduation, which still doesn’t sound quite right to me. I still remember when I used to wrap him up in blankets, then strap them tight with belts before finally stuffing him in a closet and turning the lights off. I think if I tried that now, he’d just punch me in the face and laugh at me for a while.

And that, my friends, is proof enough that life is unfair.

Congrats again, bro. And to everybody I got to see and hang out with, it was fun.

The “word” pwned has grown quite the following here in the Goob household amongst the Gooblings. We tend to have a history of taking odd sounding words and running them straight into the ground by our repeated usage of them, but this one still appears to have some life in it despite the last few months. We say it any time we punch each other and given the fact that we tend the beat the crap out of our nearest sibling somewhere in the vicinity of 19 times a day, you can imagine how Goobrent Mom has grown annoyed with the word already.

But today, Goobrent Mom left for work and thus pwned was broken out once again. On the way home from school, in the post office, even in the kitchen as it was screeched from a streaking brother as he ran down the hallway, fleeing the scene of a recent dual Wet Willie / Wedgie attack. (I’ll give you a hint. I can run really fast.)

But here’s a little word of caution. If you’re sitting in the waiting area of your local barbershop and the other patrons are giving you weird looks as your seven year old brother says over and over, “I’m gonna pwn you,” it might be because that sounds awful similar to “I’m gonna bone you.” And that, my friends, is illegal in all states, pending the approval of a new law in Alabama.

In the span of 24 hours, I received eight – count em, EIGHT – comments about my children. Which is funny, because it’s been a while since I’ve gone through the process of having sex, then asking, “so…have you peed on that stick yet, honey?” before I finally, oh you know, HAD A KID!

I should be used to this by now. And then with Colton only being six, I naturally am assumed to be his father when it’s just the two of us out and about. But Julianne is nine. Clay is thirteen. This means that if Clay was my son, I would have had to have him when I was Julianne’s age. I don’t think my 4th grade days were THAT wild and crazy.

It started when I took Juls and Clay to the dentist. Two school helpers, two nurses and one doctor later, I knew we were going to be in for a long day. By the time we’d walked out of the dentist and into the mall, I’d given up on correcting people and just started playing along: “Huh, what? Oh, Clay? Yeah, he’s a great kid, thanks. I tell ya, I can’t wait for him to grow up and start making the big bucks though, because I want to retire and let him take care of me as soon as possible!” or “Your daughter is precious as well. My little Julianne over there is a sweetheart. You should see the adorable little bracelets she makes for me. She can’t cook or clean worth a damn, but I’ll beat it into her eventually.”

And this isn’t the only misguided assumption people make about me. Last week, my mom and I were mistaken for boyfriend-girlfriend far too many times and while that may be a huge compliment to her looking young and fresh, it raises far too many Freudian issues that I would just soon rather forget. But I think the real kicker came today. The kid’s babysitter, who has got to be in her 70s, called the school and when they called back, I picked up the phone and was greeted with, “Hello, is this Clay’s father? Well, your wife called earlier”… I mean, sure, who doesn’t like older women? I just prefer mine not be on Medicare yet.

But the other night made it all worthwhile. Juls came home begging me to take her and a friend to the local skating rink since her school was having a fund raiser for a few hours. I had plenty of work to do and was kind of tired, but I could tell she really wanted to go. She spent a few minutes picking out her clothes and packing her little purse and when we arrived, she paid and got her own skates. It was around this time that she finally told me she had no idea how to skate.

Her friends tried to teach her, but after 20 minutes I could tell this wasn’t going anywhere and when I walked over to her, I could tell she was discouraged and embarrassed and ready to leave. So I did the only thing I knew to do; I went and grabbed a pair of skates myself, laced up, and as soon as I stepped into the rink, the number of people who had no idea what they were doing doubled. I never learned to skate since the skating rink near where I grew up was a tad redneck and hillbillyish. (Although, now that I think about it, every skating rink I’ve ever set foot in has fallen into that category). Juls was still grabbing onto the side, so I pulled her out into the middle with me and for the next hour and a half we twirled around like idiots and fell down approximately every seven seconds. But the whole time, we had these giant grins on our faces and by the end, Juls was getting the hang of it.

As everybody was putting their skates away and getting their coats on, one of the moms sitting nearby came up to me and said:

Hey, I wish I’d had a dad like you while growing up. Mine would have just sat over there in the corner and shouted instructions to me until I started crying.

Ok, so I guess there are worse things than being mistaken for a dad.

The cool thing about living in northern Virginia is that we’re an hour and a half away from the nation’s capital and all its historic wonders. The bad thing about living in northern Virginia is that we’re an hour and a half away from the nearest airport, which coincidentally employs my mom full time and is our main mode of any transportation involving multi-states or countries. So when I have to get up at, oh let me see, 0500 to drive to the airport and then drive home and then drive back to the airport and then drive home again, it can involve, what some might say, a tad bit of driving time.

When my mom goes to work, she’s gone for three to five days at a time. Growing up, that meant we had a babysitter come stay with us for those days since my Dad was usually off touring as well. Today, it’s still the same. My mom goes to work, the kids need somebody to watch them, and therefore a babysitter shows up. However, since I moved up here a few months back, I’ve talked my mom more and more into letting me watch them instead. It saves cash, which is always a good thing, and I like it better anyways with just me and the kids.

Colton has a tendency of suddenly spouting off random phrases, sayings, and entire conversations he’s overheard recently out of the blue. It’s hard to pick up on too, because usually half of the words that tumble from his mouth are actually spoken in a as of yet untranslated Native American tongue that sounds something along the lines of, “bicabakatiktaopikadubadubada.” His ramblings honestly sound as if he’s tuning the radio somewhere up in his brain, trying to find that right frequency that will allow him to emit comprehensive consecutive syllables. Therefore, the hard part is not trying to understand the gibberish, but trying to pick up where the radio surfing suddenly turns into real words for a few seconds before racing off into the black void of twaddle and static.

A few weeks back, our mom had left for a trip early in the morning and I had a few errands to run “in town,” so that afternoon I piled the trio into the passenger side of my truck and the adventure soon began. During the drive, Colton demanded we stop talking so that he could tell us a story and off he went channeling the dead, or at least that’s what it sounded like. We had no choice but to sit there and muffle our laughs and nod along with him when finally after a few minutes, he seemed to find the station he was looking for and began issuing orders to us.

Colton: “Guys, it’s time we had a wild party.”
Goob, Juls, & Clay (in unison): “What?”
Colton: “Yep, that’s right, a wild party. Ryan, you’re in charge of the music. Juls, you need to get the disco ball. And Clay, you bring the punch.”
Clay: “Well wait a minute, what’s your job?”
Colton: “Oh me? Um…I’ll take care of Mom!”
Juls: “But Mom already went to work this morning!”
Colton: “Well, looks like my job’s done! See y’all at the party!”

And with that, he was off into his own little world again as the rest of us burst into laughter.

One of these days, I hope we can figure out where he gets half the stuff he comes up with. Until then, I’ll just sit by the radio and see what’s on.