Sunday Afternoon Slug Stuff

About 11 years ago I saw the first ultrasound (or was it sonogram – I have NO idea what the difference is) of the little baby man inside my wife.  I won’t lie – I was ecstatic that it was a dude in there, but only cuz they make a lot more sense to me.  My obvious reaction was to make two quick purchases:

1. A plush football that said, “My First Football”

2. A Flatbed Scanner – this was to scan the images to e-mail the, uh, proof, that we were having a boy.  In fact I actually edited the picture by drawing a digital circle around the, uh, proof, and inserting an arrow and comment that said, “See, it’s a boy!”  Of course this was all just a big excuse to buy an electronic device that I barely ever used – not the last time this would happen…

My boys do lots of the same stuff that I remember doing – and plenty of things that I probably should remember doing, but have selectively forgotten.  For instance, today my oldest came home from church intent on killing slugs by dumping salt on them.  (As an afterthought - I’d like to know what his church lesson was about.)  My reaction was to ask him why killing slugs made sense and that he had to answer in the form of a written paragraph.  Here’s his response:

“Why killing slugs makes sense:

One reason why killing slugs is a good thing is that slugs eat flowers and plants.  The other reason is there will be less slugs here to kill the plants.  The last reason is that slugs get burned from the salt and it burns off their skin.”

He added an illustration involving the three big S’s (slug, salt, slime), which I shouldn’t describe, but I suspect was fairly accurate.  So even though I found it morally reprehensible, by which I mean I totally would be doing the same thing at 10 years old, I handed him the salt shaker begrudgingly told him he could go.  His female siblings were equal parts fascinated and disgusted at what he was doing.  Boys are pretty weird, no doubt, but we can create a lot of fun out of a salt shaker and/or scanner.

Update:  Here’s the actual “paragraph.”