Adventures Of Fatherhood

Adventures Of Fatherhood
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Getting his little brother in trouble is something Beckett thoroughly enjoys.

The problem for him is we have caught on to his antics.

It’s common for Beckett, 7, to tell Carson, 5, to do something he’s not supposed to do, but he does it in a conniving way that clearly has devious intentions.

For example, while sitting in our beach chairs last weekend by the water, the kids were having a juice box. As usual, Beckett crushed his in a few gulps because everything’s a competition to him. Afterwards, he got in front of Carson and bent down to him in his seat, saying in what he thought was a whisper, “now remember buddy, don’t throw your juice box in the ocean.”

He then stepped aside and Carson fell for it. He tossed his juice box in the ocean, but not before removing the straw and throwing that in the opposite direction. We made Carson get the juice box while I hunted down the straw in the ocean.

Another example came the other morning while walking out of the house. Rarely if ever do my boys hold hands anymore. Therefore, when I saw Beckett grab Carson’s hand to walk to the car, I had my suspicions, and it didn’t take long for those to be confirmed. He challenged Carson to a race. Since he knows it’s not a fair competition at this point, he mixed up the course by instructing Carson to run to the other side of the road while he did cartwheels to the car. I have no idea how that leveled the playing field in Beckett’s mind, but, because Carson idolizes his brother, he started to head toward the street before I intercepted him.

While I was upset with Carson for blindly following his brother’s terrible suggestion, I was more agitated with the troublemaker and let him know about it. After my rant, which I thought came out pretty well, Beckett summed up what he took from it.

He asked, “So I can try and get him in trouble whenever I want so long as he doesn’t get hurt?”

For the record, that’s not at all what I said.

Carson’s precision accuracy with throwing continues to amaze me.

Several recent displays illustrate what an arm he has and how accurate he can be, while other instances make me wonder if it might all just be luck.

On the way back from Easter Seals one morning this week, Carson was drinking from a water bottle and watching a video. At one point, he must have decided he was tired of holding the bottle and chucked it from his car seat in the back of the minivan — about four feet — and hit me directly on the head.

What made that impressive was it had to bend around a seat in front of him as well as avoid the video screen. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode involving “the magic loogie” with Kramer, Newman, Roger McDowell and Keith Hernandez. It defied logic. Fortunately, he put the cap back on the water bottle before he let it go because it was still half full.

These impressive feats have happened before and I recall driving to Disney World last spring and turning my head to talk to Pam in the passenger seat and being struck with a French fry in the temple. Even Beckett gave Carson kudos over that one and tried to duplicate the feat several times to no avail.

Last Saturday while taking in an event at The Freeman Stage Beckett and Carson were seated among other kids in the front. At some point, Carson decided he didn’t want his sunglasses. I was off to the side keeping my eyes on them while Pam was seated a few rows behind them. She saw Carson take off his sunglasses and motioned for him to bring them to her. Instead of doing as she asked, he hurled them over a dozen or so individuals and they landed directly in his mom’s lap. She looked for me and she knew I saw it. She could read my lips as I said, “What an arm.”

A similar situation played out on the beach one recent day. I was taking the boys in the ocean and I told Carson to take back his rake and bucket to our area. He did so by heaving his bucket from an impressive distance and then tossing the rake directly next to it without even looking.

Over and over again, he continues to impress with his accuracy, so one night this week I took him in the backyard to see how he would do with playing catch with a miniature football. We have done this before and he always does a terrible job. He usually struggles getting it anywhere near me because he doesn’t try hard. He started getting frustrated after a few attempts so we moved on to something else.

However, on the way to our playset, he picked up a stick and threw it about 15 yards and hit me squarely in the back. He did it again a little later on with a walnut but this time in the head.

Cleary it’s a matter of desire.