Octopuses and Adventurers
To begin, I am told by my second son that I need to provide clarification on the name of this blog since, 'We never even met an octopus.' He is correct, mostly, although I am partial to calamari.
Octopuses and Adventurers is the name of a game the boys used to play at bed time after they'd had a bath- somewhere between watching the last of the whirlpool disappear down the drain and being crammed into their pajamas. One boy would hide naked under his bed while the other two, also naked, would stand on top of the bed as if it were an island and dramatically survey the surrounding seas. Eventually one brave explorer would dive off of the island into the 'ocean' and be unceremoniously ankle grabbed and dragged screaming and flailing by the 'octopus' back into his under-bed-cavern where the two would have a violent but genial kick-fight. The third brother was left to pick at random either an octopus or adventurer to assault depending upon who seemed to be winning. After a brief scuffle the explorer was always quite obviously dead to the octopus but remained very much alive in his own opinion since, "I chopped off all of your tentacles with my light saber."
As these things tend to go there were then shouts of "You are DEAD! LAY ON THE GROUND!" and, "You didn't get me! I'm only dead if you tap my left knee three times with your right index finger while singing the itsy-bitsy spider backwards in French!", or something equally as difficult to achieve, and so on until it devolved into general pinching, scratching, biting, gouging, smacking, kicking, whacking, punching and wailing, all before I'd even finished mopping up the post-bath flood. Rug burn all around.
After a few similar episodes, one of which involved a (still naked) 'high dive' onto the octopus from the top bunk and the last of which ended with someone's 'sea kelp' being shut in a closet door, Octopuses and Adventurers was banned and the boys now have no memory of its existence, which is exactly what makes it feel like an appropriate title for a blog about our lives. The memories they have of their own antics and creativity will never be as clear as they are to the woman who gets a front row seat to the joyful mayhem of their boyhood. Seared into the very walls of my brain, muttered into a cold cup of coffee, and now typed at scattered intervals here on a page. Happy reading.
Octopuses and Adventurers is the name of a game the boys used to play at bed time after they'd had a bath- somewhere between watching the last of the whirlpool disappear down the drain and being crammed into their pajamas. One boy would hide naked under his bed while the other two, also naked, would stand on top of the bed as if it were an island and dramatically survey the surrounding seas. Eventually one brave explorer would dive off of the island into the 'ocean' and be unceremoniously ankle grabbed and dragged screaming and flailing by the 'octopus' back into his under-bed-cavern where the two would have a violent but genial kick-fight. The third brother was left to pick at random either an octopus or adventurer to assault depending upon who seemed to be winning. After a brief scuffle the explorer was always quite obviously dead to the octopus but remained very much alive in his own opinion since, "I chopped off all of your tentacles with my light saber."
As these things tend to go there were then shouts of "You are DEAD! LAY ON THE GROUND!" and, "You didn't get me! I'm only dead if you tap my left knee three times with your right index finger while singing the itsy-bitsy spider backwards in French!", or something equally as difficult to achieve, and so on until it devolved into general pinching, scratching, biting, gouging, smacking, kicking, whacking, punching and wailing, all before I'd even finished mopping up the post-bath flood. Rug burn all around.
After a few similar episodes, one of which involved a (still naked) 'high dive' onto the octopus from the top bunk and the last of which ended with someone's 'sea kelp' being shut in a closet door, Octopuses and Adventurers was banned and the boys now have no memory of its existence, which is exactly what makes it feel like an appropriate title for a blog about our lives. The memories they have of their own antics and creativity will never be as clear as they are to the woman who gets a front row seat to the joyful mayhem of their boyhood. Seared into the very walls of my brain, muttered into a cold cup of coffee, and now typed at scattered intervals here on a page. Happy reading.
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