I'm telling you this now, so you won't be surprised when he gets married next year.

C has loved two girls in his short life. He would tell you the same thing.

"I love Susie and I love the Kitty-house girl. That works." He has said. (KHG is his friend from TX).

He made Susie this card:



On the back it says "I love Susie". He meant to take it to her at a birthday party they were both invited to, but he forgot. When he got home and remembered, he cried and cried. So, I decided I could take him there to give it to her and then I could check e-mail (this was back before we had internet at home, back in the dark ages). So we walked up to the school (Susie lives on campus with her parents), talking all the way about what he was going to say, why he wants to give it to her, how much she'll like it. We get there and go inside their apartment. He barely acknowledges her. I think, how odd, he was just talking about her. Maybe he's nervous.

"C, are you going to give Susie the card?"

He gives it to her silently.

I say something about how odd that he's acting so aloof and Susie's Mom says,

"Just like a boy."


Fast forward a month.

We're sitting at the dinner table and somehow the topic of marriage comes up.

Mr. French says to S, "Someday you'll want to get married. You know, when you're older, you'll have a wife like Daddy has a wife." He points to me.

S looks skeptical.

C waves his hand. "Me, too! Me, too!"

"Oh, you want to get married C?" asks Mr. French.

C nodds eagerly in agreement.

"And then you can have babies. Like you boys are Mommy and Daddy's babies, but you can have your own."

S looks highly skeptical now and C gets a disgusted look on his face. "Nooo. I'm not going to have babies. Just a wife."


Fast forward to today:

It's the day of Susie's birthday party. I suggest that the boys should make her cards. S states that he knows she likes bears, so he'll draw her a bear and then proceeds to draw her a fish and a dinosaur card. C draws a picture of her with a bow in her hair and then draws a heart on the back. (Similar to the first one, except without the 'I love Susie' on the back.) He asks me to write Susie on the inside, which I do. Then he asks me to write French* (our last name). I repeat that to make sure I heard him correctly.

"Yeah."

"But that's not Susie's last name. That's our last name. Her last name is Smith*."

"Oh."

"Do you want me to write Smith?"

"No. I want you to write French."

"But that's not her last name."

Finally, we compromised and he wrote our last name next to her name.

Her parents shouldn't be too worried because she's moving at the end of the month.


*Last names have been changed because, duh, it's the internet.