My Son; The Honey Badger

*Readers: I must apologize to you. I haven’t blogged in over a week, because I simply haven’t had the heart. Last week, 7 year old Jorelys Rivera was raped, beaten and stabbed to death in the town next to mine, and the crime affected me emotionally. She was playing on her playground when she was abducted. My own daughter turns 7 in just 2 weeks, and I cannot imagine the unbearable pain that her mother must be going through. I just didn’t have the heart to indulge in comedy and frivolity. Jorelys was laid to rest last night, and there has been an arrest made for her murder. This has put my soul at ease, at least enough to free me to write again. Keep a watch over your children and loved ones. Evil is lurking where you least expect it.

I am thankful for the topic of today’s post, because as wearisome as it is keeping up with my son, I am grateful that he is safe and that his antics are amusing enough to provide me with daily blog fodder.

Akuba Sheen(!) and I both have children who are just over two years old. While her daughter – Victoria – is reserved and well-mannered (particularly for someone in this age group), Stone is the very antithesis of either. We often compare notes between our two toddlers.

“I wish I had the audacity of a two year old,” she sighed one day.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Victoria is completely fearless. If I had her gumption I’d be so successful by now.”

She detailed how Victoria routinely does back flips on her queen-sized bed and licks the Nutella off her toast. If she had it her way, she wouldn’t have to fool with the toast at all. Akuba Sheen’s(!) version of ‘fearlessness’ seemed rather mundane to me. It was sweet, but mundane none-the-less.

My thoughts turned to my son, whose behavior it has become rather difficult for me to predict. I am baffled how someone’s whose entire existence is dependent on whether or not I get up in the morning has the impudence to tell me “NO”.

“Stone, don’t eat that food off the ground.”

“No, Mommy!”

“Stone, don’t tell Mommy ‘no’,” I assert.

“No, Mommy! No, no, NO!” he screams, pointing his chubby finger.

I resist the urge to bite it.

“Stone!” I boom. “The floor is dirty! A dog just pooped where your popcorn fell. Don’t eat off the floor!”

“No, Momeeeeee!!!! Nononononono!!”

At this point I relent and let him eat poop covered popcorn. Now that’s fearlessness. As I watch my son munch on the remnants of his tainted snack, I wonder if there is any way possible for me to get some footage sent to Joe Rogan. My two year old would be an excellent contestant for ‘Fear Factor’ (which comes back to television tonight. *squeal!*) – because obviously fear is not a factor for him.

Someone forwarded me this link a few days ago (Can you believe people still do that?) of a honey badger. I guffawed gregariously until I paused and realized that I LIVE with this creature.

Honey badger  <<< You’ll want to watch this

I watched in amazement as the honey badger attacked and eventually devoured a cobra after unwittingly being bitten. As the venom coursed through its body, it appeared to die. A few minutes later it shook off the effects of the poison and continued to consume the serpent it had just disemboweled.

I’ve seen Stone treat pieces of steak the same way.

My son, like the honey badger, races through his environment without regard to the other inhabitants that inconveniently share his space. His sole focus is obtaining the object of his desire for the moment. Today that object was McDonald’s.

“I wan’ num Mawwwmeeee!! I wan’ NUM!!”

Using my immense powers of interpretation, I deduced ‘num’ to be ‘lunch’ or something ‘nummy’. Those powers and a quick glance in the review mirror to observe him pointing at the aforementioned McDonald’s helped me steer the car in that direction. We had just dropped Aya off at school after having spent a harrowing hour and a half at the dentist where Stone disrobed from the waste up and consequently streaked through the dentist’s office before I could grab him, and I did not want to reward his behavior (which he had by now forgotten) with a fast-food “treat.”

I relented because I myself needed the sedating qualities of a Big Mac to calm my frazzled nerves.

I listened as he munched loudly on the greasy food as we drove home.

“Oh num-num! This is deli-shush!” he squealed in appreciation.

Guilt-ridden, I drove home knowing that I had just traded 10 years of my son’s life for 15 minutes of quiet with that one meal.

Did you know that the honey badger doesn’t actually eat honey? It actually eats the larvae of bees that live in the hives it invades. Kinda gross huh?

Stone does something similar. In the wee hours of the morning these last few weeks, he’s come creeping into our bedroom in search of warmth – I presume – and always to my side of the bed. Stinking of recently discharged urine and mumbling unintelligibly, the encounters are very much akin to snuggling with a wine-o; if you count an elbow to your jaw as “snuggling”. He has never approached Marshall, because I think he instinctively knows that he father is an even bigger honey badger and will evict him immediately. In the past I would console myself with the false belief that he preferred my warmth and girth to his father’s, but seeing as his father possesses far more of the two, in quantity at least, I have come to accept that I am just a more compliant victim.

Does the honey badger have a sweet side? I’m sure amongst its own kind it must. Despite his eccentricities my son is capable of tremendous sweetness. Today he was singing a hallelujah refrain that he must have picked up in church recently. Perhaps he was making up for screaming his head off during a what was supposed to be a tender and solemn moment when we visited a friend’s church just this Saturday night. A 12 year old girl decided to give her life to Christ, and as she stood in front of the (silent) congregation, all that was to be heard above the soft melody of the keyboard in the background was my two year old hollering “No! No! Nooooo!!!!”

I don’t think Jesus appreciated that. I ushered my son out of the church before he could make any more objections to other souls entering God’s kingdom. I just hope I can raise him well enough to make it there himself.