It’s so hard to remember he’s twelve…
He lurches around the house like giant. He’s taller than everyone living under our roof. He’s got bigger hands and feet than me. And he eats up all the food in the pantry.
Then again, it’s easy to remember he’s twelve…
He just caught me watching a movie while his mother was sleeping on my shoulder, and whispered “Can I go ride my bike over to Liam’s house?” I asked him if he had all his chores done and he said yes. I told him to go ahead.
An hour or so goes by, I went up to his room just to check on measurements for a possible gift from his Grandparents for Christmas. The room was a disaster. I literally couldn’t walk anywhere in there without stepping on something.
I called him. No answer.
I texted him “You lied about your room being clean. Get your ass home.” No response. My wife checked his phone’s GPS, turned out he was over at another friend’s house, not named Liam.
When he finally came home about 2 hours later, without so much as a text, or call, that he was okay on his way back, I asked him why he lied to me.
He just stopped and stared straight down. And the waiting game was on. I kept looking at him and he kept looking at the ground.
Thirty seconds went by and I said, “Why did you lie to me Travis?” He just looked up quick and down again. Another 30-45 seconds of nothing came and went.
“Is your room clean?” I said.
“Maybe….not….to the extent that it should be…” He stuttered.
“What? Your room is either clean or it isn’t. Is it?”
“No.”
“No. No. Go up there and clean it up. And don’t ask me for anything for awhile because the answer is no. I’ll leave it to your mom to figure out where you really were because we know you weren’t at Liam’s”
And with that our big-little twelve-year-old headed up the stairs, backpack still on, shaking his head. Hours later he came down with two full garbage bags to take out. Unbelievable.
1:30 in the morning rolls around and I woke up, walked out into the kitchen to get some water and I hear what sounds like a rock-concert upstairs. I go and check into it. Travis is jumping up and down, screaming random stuff into his phone. Turns out he was ‘group gaming’ with friends, in the middle of the night. Worse yet, even though I wasn’t able to confirm it 100%, I think he was talking to a girl on the phone.
The possible next chapter. Brutal.
He’s also got his own youtube channel called Travisironman. His videos are absolutely ridiculous. So so so ridiculous. And I can’t look away. I’m seen most of them 3 or 4 times. Sometimes more. The intro and shorter ones I’ve seen 10-15 times. Ironically I was in the middle of watching his latest video when he came back from his ‘friend’s’ house after lying to me.
He’s the only YouTube account I officially subscribe to.
Chloe thinks I’m making fun of him by watching them so much and his mom thinks I’m his biggest fan. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I’m addicted. But mostly, no matter what content he produces, (if you even wanna call it content) I’m just super glad he likes doing them. If it’s fun for him and he enjoys it, that’s all that matters.
And it helps remind me he’s a 12-year-old.
