Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 13, 1995 TAG: 9504130027
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We are sitting in the Regency Room of the renovated Hotel Roanoke the morning of its first official breakfast buffet. Because the family adults can't all fit at the table next to us, I offer to sit at the ``kid table'' with Rex and Colin, my 9- and 10-year-old nephews from Indianapolis.
It is a new experience - not unlike being the only adult at a Ninja Turtle movie screening, or the lone chaperone at a Boy Scout camp-out.
It reminds me of the time pre-teen heart-throb Doug Rutan looked up the popular slang for flatulence in Miss Tobias' fifth-grade dictionary, and reported back to our table the Webster's definition: ``a slight explosion.''
We thought Doug was so funny, we were literally rolling on the floor crying. Miss Tobias thought Doug was so funny, he was literally writing his arm off at the chalkboard:
``I will not make inappropriate comments in class. I will not make. . . '' and so on for the rest of the class period.
At the hotel restaurant, I ask my nephews why they feel they are newsworthy.
"Like, we came to this big fancy motel, and it had these really giant forks, and we ate really good food," Rex says. He uses his really giant fork to pick at his cinnamon roll, then gives it up for his hand and plunges the roll into his mouth.
He fiddles with his carton of milk, trying to get it open, then passes it to me for that ultimate dexterity test of hand and mind - opening the "OPEN" side of the carton first, without tearing it up.
"At school, I drank one of these in SIX SECONDS," he brags. He begins glugging the whole milk while Colin monitors his watch.
"THAT WAS EIGHT SECONDS!" Colin screams. Tolerant people wearing pantyhose and suits sit nearby in padded chairs, delicately forking cherry blintzes and sipping coffee from china.
I tell Colin they'll have to get a lot funnier than that to merit newspaper space.
As if on cue, the milk-moustached Rex takes a deep breath and lets out the longest, loudest belch I've ever heard.
The boys giggle themselves under the table.
You've heard of "The Wonder Years."
The boys' mom, Kathryn, calls these "The Gross Years."
A pediatric nurse-practitioner, my sister-in-law knows the child-development phases like the back of her stethoscope. She warns us before the family arrives to spend its spring-break week in Roanoke, "Body functions are big, especially with the boys."
I never realized how genetically wired boys and girls can be till I compared my own toddler son to his friend Francesca. Take the case of the Poppity-Pop Car by Fisher-Price, the plastic car with the people-figure in it and the colorful balls that pop when the car is pushed.
When Max got his car for Christmas, he immediately threw the plastic person out and started vroom-ing the car on the floor. When Francesca got hers, she immediately set the car aside to play with the plastic figure.
(Their two interests collided at her recent birthday party, when he stole her plastic light-up cordless telephone, then she took it back, and so on.)
But back to the boys. Their 14-year-old sister Meghan has perfected the fine art of rolling her eyes at their antics - especially last week when she overheard them teaching Max the word ``butt.''
She's used to their budding senses of humor, used to comedy at its most basic. And she graciously accepts her youngest cousin Max into this fraternity of the foul, knowing that he, too, will one day pass gas with irreverence and aplomb.
Ah, The Gross Years. It had been a long time since I spent a week with two pre-teen boys. Rex left Roanoke with three bandages on his limbs, two from a bike wreck and one from a hiking spill on McAfee Knob. Colin left with his version of ``the coolest thing ever'' - a five-inch high plastic insect he picked out at the Science Museum of Western Virginia gift shop.
They are old enough to fight over the front seat of the car, young enough to hug me good-bye. I am young enough to remember these years, old enough to anticipate going through them on the other side.
Maybe they're The Wonder Years after all.
Beth Macy is a features-department staff writer and Thursday columnist.
by CNB