Well.. that might be a little extreme. Nothing's certain yet, but last night at dinner, Ben dropped a bombshell on us. He turned to me and said "Daddy, do you notice anything different about me?"
It was an unexpected question. I had to think about it for a second, before responding with my own question, "Do you mean... since this morning?"
When he answered, "Yes" I had to think about it a little while longer. I looked at him and tried to see if he had any new bruises (no), missing any more teeth (no), got another haircut (no), temporary tattoo (no), permanent tattoo (no), piercings (no), Nobel peace prize (no)...
I took a wild guess, "Umm.. you're wearing shorts?"
He looked down. He was indeed wearing shorts, but who knows, he might have been wearing them all day long. I certainly didn't know, and I doubt he did either. It's Penelope's job to be the observant one.
"No," he said, "I stopped picking my nose."
And now that he mentioned it, I did notice it. I'd been sitting there a good fifteen minutes and I didn't have to tell him to stop digging for gold... not even once! It all started about 16 months ago, around the time of this post. He's been practicing a lot between then and now, and he's quite proficient at it these days. On any given evening in recent memory, he could only go about five minutes between excursions.
I asked him, "Wait.. so after all this time you spent on this hobby, you're just going to call it quits and give up?" No, actually, I didn't ask him that. I don't think that quickly on my feet. Instead, it was something more like, "Do you mean... for good? You just decided to stop, and now you're done?"
"Yep," he said.
Well, I must say that I'm overjoyed by this news. And, to his credit, It hasn't happened (while I'm looking) last night or tonight. We'll see what the future holds. There's a whole weekend coming up.
