Love Sick

My boy, my sweet boy, is lovesick.

Oh, he's got it bad.

So bad.

It's painful.

He writes heartfelt love notes. Sweetly mis-spelled poems. He can't think. He can't concentrate.

He's still eating everything in sight and sleeping soundly, so I'm not too worried. Mostly amused. But then, another parent will tell me a story about my little darling and I will get a glimpse - just an inkling - of where we are headed.

"Hey" he said to a friend's husband last week.

"Uh, hey there." The typical response when my boy dials in and starts a conversation. He's an intense little dude. People get that right away.

"You know women?" Max asked, obviously impressed by the guy's wife, a hot derby girl with long blonde hair who tends bar at a restaurant just down the street from the restaurant where I tend bar.

What can I say. Freud knew what he was talking about.

"What?!"

"Do you know a lot about women?" ("you moron" was, as always, not said but clearly implied.)

"Uh, yeah, I guess." the poor bewildered man answered, as he was trying to calculate in his head just how old my son could possibly be.

(He's nine.)

Or this exchange which was related to us tonight.

"So," he asked, sidling up to another friend's husband. "How'd you win her?"

"What?!" (Max gets that reaction a lot. He's used to it.)

"Your wife." (again, "you moron" would go right about here.) "How'd you get her to marry you?"

Not getting the information he needed out of the guy, he went straight to the source.

"Hey." he said to my friend. "How'd he win you?"

"What?!" (Like I said, it's pretty much the universal reaction to Max.)

He's definite;y not afraid to approach women, THAT'S for sure. His patented "pretend you're going in for a hug, then grab their boob" move is legendary among the over 18-crowd. He's got moves, and he's not afraid to use them. And oh, the sweet talking.

Like that time I took him to the chiropractor. He's lying there on the table when suddenly he pops up on one elbow.

"Hey." he said to the woman lying facedown on the table next to him. "How are you? What's your name?" She raised her head up and looked at him, baffled. Not one to be easily discouraged, Max launched into the next question right away, while her guard was still down. "What do you do?" which was said in such a Joey Tribianni-esque "how you doin'?" tone, that the entire room burst out laughing. Turns out, she owns a popular restaurant, and so they chatted about the menu, and by the end of the conversation she was basically trying to convince him to come in and eat sometime. "We have great burgers!" she insisted as she was leaving. "You should come try them!"

Or that time he went on a field trip, and the parents and kids were all swimming. One of the moms took out her ponytail and Max stopped splashing and hooting, mesmerized, and then swam over. "You look beautiful with your hair down," he said, in awe. "You look so different!"

"Why thank you Max." she said, unfazed by his charms.

Ah, so close. Better luck next time, my boy.