Out Of The Cave

Having five children can make it easy to... well... lose one every now and then.

Luke on a rare excursion out of the house to meet his older sister's parrot

This is kind of the case with our middle child, Luke. He is twelve years old and somewhat of a recluse. Aside from school, church and his activities with the Boy Scout Troop, he really doesn't like to go places. And by places, I mean anything outside of the confines of his room.

He generally does not like to go to stores, out to eat or anything else that pulls his away from his routines. He talks of making videos, wanting to have his own YouTube channel and certain series of novels that he likes. The YouTube part can be a bit worrisome until you realize that he simply wants to chronicle things. When he spends time there, it is typically watching videos of other people narrating their play while engaged in the Minecraft game. He likes Star Wars too but is generally quiet about it. In fact, he kind of reminds me of a hairless Ewok from those films, hence I call him "chub-Chubs."

There are many days that I simply go in his room just to see if everything is indeed alright as I have not seen him for hours.

He leaves the house for school obviously, Scout meetings and activities, confirmation class and an occasional hockey game round out the limited range of his ventures.

He is very patterned and kind of predictable.

A trip to Olive Garden

Then there is the food. His tastes in food are very narrow as well. Microwave beef and bean burritos balanced by the occasional gouda and bacon grilled cheese from Tom-Chee are the fare of the day. He will however consider Olive Garden.

I will say that if you mention the state of Tennessee, specifically the Smoky Mountains, he is ready to jump in the car for a five hour drive before you can finish the sentence.

So anyway... what does this have to do with caves?

When we see Luke out of his room unexpectedly, we usually say that he is out of his cave.

He had been at a Boy Scout Merit Badge University all day today working on the Chemistry merit badge. His 16 year old brother was being dropped off at the mall to spend some time with his girlfriend.

For Luke this must have been opportunistic. He has been holding onto a $50 bill that he was given before Christmas. Now in my mind, for a twelve year old to hold onto that much money in a single piece of currency for almost two months is amazing. He announced that if I was taking his brother to the mall, that he would like to go and spend some of his money.

What?

Leave the house?

Voluntarily?

Unheard of... of course I consented.

Once we had facilitated the drop off of his older brother, I allowed Luke to lead. He was apparently on a mission. The first store we visited was "Inside Scoop," a bulk candy store. This place has almost everything you can imagine as far as candy goes... in bulk. Need a single, flavor of Jelly Belly's? No problem. Candy necklaces? Yep. You name it. They probably have it.

After 30 minutes of careful shopping, he made his purchase. He spent a total of around $6 on three spray candy flavors. He put the paper money change back in his wallet, put the silver coinage in his pocket and handed me two cents.

"I don't like pennies," he said.

"Neither do I."

After that, we walked the rest of the mall. After a few minutes, he looked up and said he was ready to go home. Looking at all the stores, I said "Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm hungry. I want a burrito." A man of few words.

We headed to the car. I made a stop on the way home to check for some art supplies I had been looking for and Luke managed to spend another $3 on some decorative duct tape.

Again, I got pennies.

On the way home we talked about music. He then asked me a question that stunned me... a few weeks ago we had listened to an old eighties tune called "99 Red Balloons." We had listened to it in German.

"Can you find 99 Red Balloons in English?"

I pulled over, found it on YouTube on my phone and let it play. He liked it. I was catapulted back to 1983 and remembered the lyrics.

After that and another video, we were home. I received a few father-son bonding moments and a view into the thoughts of a somewhat reclusive child that is obviously pretty frugal.

One-on-one time with Chub-chubs outside the house is a rarity. Seems he now likes eighties music too as the next one he asked for was "Video Killed the Radio Star" (which was the first video played on MTV).

I could use a bit more time doing things like this.

Kids need one-on-one time with parents away from other siblings. Parents need the same.

With that, I leave you with links to "99 Red Balloons" and "Video Killed the Radio Star."

Enjoy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bQGFb74Skc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPEwluSNzgc