Oh, Say, Can You See...

...every fricken kid in the neighborhood is at my house?? People, a word of warning: If you put up a swing set in your yard, you are sure to attract children, like bees to honey. The swings went up Saturday. Saturday afternoon, Max was chatting over the fence to neighbors I've never met, inviting them over to "hang out" and play on the swing set. Then, he yelled out to another neighbor, "Come on over!!". By Monday evening, we had children from two different sets of neighbors playing over and Max had met a new friend riding his bike. Guess what? He came over, too. Now, I'm psyched to meet our neighbors. I like that my boys have close proximity to playmates for the summer days when they're bored and sick of my company. I just fear that we'll never be alone again... ever.... I know I am probably getting a little ahead of myself, but you don't know my son. He invites EVERYONE over. Last fall we stopped into a local pizza joint/bar to pick up some pizzas for dinner. While I'm paying, he strolls over to the game of pool that's going on and tells the young guys there that he has a pool table in his basement if they ever wanted to come over and play. They laughed as my face washed over in horror and said, "yeah, but we like to have a few beers while we play". No problem, answers Max, my mom's got the beers!! Again at the local IGA, we're grabbing some marshmallows for a little campfire one night and Max addresses the cute girl running the register: "We're having a fire tonight, wanna come over?" She giggles and invites all the other cashiers over to see how cute he is. Max is all business, he wants to know "what time they get off work". I'm not kidding, my 5-year-old son is working on teenage girls here! I guess I should just relax. The swing set is paid for and it's assembled. The boys have friends to play with and I don't have to lug them over to anyone else's house. I have a pool table in the basement and plenty of beers and if I get desperate, there are some hip young dudes down at Mustang Sally's that I can use Max to wrangle into coming over. For some beers of course.