How to Cross a Moat

There’s a fine line between informative or colorful details and flat out too much information… no, screw that; there’s no fine line.. there’s a very, VERY obvious line. In fact, it's a moat... with thick, black water and green, man-eating creatures intended to deter univited guests from barging in, yet luring daredevils to risk it all to get to the other side. An extreme analogy, I know... but you'll appreciate my boldness later as you come to recognize that indeed, the line... or "moat" has been crossed. For example, see if you can decipher which conversation "goes there"...

Conversation 1:

“Hi! How’s your summer going?”

… “Oh, it’s been nice. Busy though… we’ve had lots of out of town visitors and have had fun playing tourist. How’s about you?”

Conversation 2:

“Hi! Nice to meet you! Have you been enjoying your summer?”

… “Umm, well, it’s been okay except, well… we probably have lice. Oh, and I broke some things in a store that were really expensive. Soooo… I don’t know.”

If you said example number two is clearly T.M.I… a bounding leap to the other side of what we needed to know, then you definitely have polished social skills. If you thought it was an exaggerated example and can’t possibly be real, then you must not know my son Bubb.

In one day’s time, he managed to tell three people the current state of our follicular and financial well being. My two teacher friends who had met him for the first time, and the sample guy at Trader Joes were all treated to what was supposed to be family information only. Yeah… the guy dishing out lasagna into paper cups found out all within five seconds of meeting Bubb that, A) he loves lasagna, B) he broke a $200 vase at Pier 1, and C) we might have lice.

You might be wondering, A) What the hell was my reaction and, B) What the hell was their reaction… and quite possibly, C) What the hell was Bubb’s reaction to everyone else’s reaction?

Before I go any further, first let me explain the whole lice situation. Really what we have here is most likely the result of an over-reaction from none other than me. We never really HAD lice. It was a slim possibility that one nit bounced along the trampoline where the kids played with the neighbor girl for an hour and sprung into their hair, but we never had a chance to find out… because as soon as the mom told me the news that her girl had ‘em, Bubb and Lucky were in a tub; Mister was at the store buying bottles of organic treatments; and every bed was stripped and washed in water the temperature of a thousand suns. In fact, two pillows literally disintegrated in the high heat setting in the dryer... with nothing left of them but foam dust stuck to the sides of the drum.

I wasn’t emotional at all; just busy… and a little punchy. I kinda laughed when combing through the kids hair as they asked questions, telling them it’s no big deal… just a lot of work to get rid of. When Lucky asked if lice could ever be pets, I realized I needed to be honest… and may have inadvertently told them we need to go thru the motions as if they had lice.

So, there you have it. All my fancy, wordy explanations and candid childhood stories… and Bubb heard this: “blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah… we have lice.”

Why Bubb decided it was appropriate to include this personal information in his “I’m meeting a new person” conversational bag of tricks is beyond me. You can imagine the facial expressions of the listeners… who of course took a step back and immediately looked at me… only to see that I was already horrified and looking at Bubb, with the words written all over my face… “What the… what? Head voice, Bubb… HEAD voice!”

Maybe that’s why he also mentioned in the same breath that he broke a vase in Pier 1… to distract from the lice thing? I guess it’s a reasonable tactic. It’s like saying “I’ve got a giant tapeworm… oh, and we’re outta milk.”  If I had to chose, I guess I would rather talk about milk.

I don’t know… seriously. No explanation. Too many popsicles this summer perhaps has caused some frozen nerve synapses in the forethought area of his brain? Maybe he’s smarter than I thought and knows that it’s a sure way to stop an adult from continuing the conversation.

In case you jumped the moat along with Bubb and wanted to know if we ever found lice and how he broke an expensive vase at Pier 1, I suppose I owe you an answer at this point. No, we never found any “hair pets”; and the vase incident was an unfortunate casualty of extreme nine year old couch sulking. Nuff said.

So, now that we are all on the wrong side of the moat together, it’s awfully hard to get back. Tell me more about that tapeworm…