Junto Boys

GROWING UP SEEGER

Last Saturday, Cadence slept over at Christina's house. Christina lives with her grandparents with no other siblings. She's a decent kid but she lies about things that don't matter, such as having seen movies that she hasn't really seen, so I don't fully trust her and I'm always hopeful that Cadence will find a better BFF. When they're together, their prime directive under Christina's leadership is to apply makeup and sneak candy. Anyways, I trust Cadence's judgment so I don't worry too much when they're out of my sight.

So, Sunday around noon, I called Cadence on her cell phone and asked her when she was coming home. She said they were going to a movie first and she'd be home after. "Okay. What are you going to see?" I ask. "We don't know yet," she tells me.

So, a few hours later, she is dropped off at home, and I ask her what she saw, and she tells me Beverly Hills Chihuahua. "Did you like it?" "Yeah." End of conversation. They are 11 and it seemed a reasonable choice in a limited field of new releases. Besides, I can barely get Cadence to watch the Thriller video on YouTube, so I know she's not sneaking into slasher movies with her friends.

Cut to Monday night at the dinner table, Marci is expressing her concern for the lack of grandparental oversight during the drop-off at the movie theater. We went over the timeline and established that grandpa dropped off the girls, who bought their own tickets, then waited outside the theater afterwards for grandpa to pick them up. I backed my daughter that this was an acceptable amount of independence for her age and maturity level. I mainly want to confirm that grandpa didn't drive away until the girls had tickets in hand and he didn't leave them waiting too long afterward. I know that it is their dream to see movies alone because when Marci took them to see The Traveling Pants, they ditched her at the candy counter and secured seating for two in a different row from where Marci wound up sitting. Cadence shrugged it off at the time as if she was just following orders but later apologized.

Now, cut to Wednesday night. We kissed Cadence good night around 9PM, then settled in for a movie. Our first visitor was Mason, which is his standard play ever since he saw Monster House and is convinced the noise the gate makes when the wind blows is some sort of death threat. His story makes an interesting tangent: he had a pacemaker installed eight years ago and it's battery life recently came to an end. We visited his cardiologist, expecting to set a date for surgery, but instead, the doctor surprised us with the news that Mason doesn't really need the device any longer, so once the battery drains, it can be regarded as shrapnel. He warned us that something we may notice is an increase in sleeplessness, because if Mason's heartbeat falls below a certain rate, he will get a shot of adrenaline which will wake him up. True to his word, we now get regular visits from Mason at three in the morning at our bedside, giving us the shot of adrenaline as we determine whether it is friend or foe silhouetted in the moonlight.

So, moments after Mason got retucked, we were surprised that our next visitor was Cadence, crying and holding a shoebox. She had come to confess and offer gifts. It turns out that she had actually seen Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist that day and Christina had convinced her to just tell her parents that they had seen the Chihuahua movie. Ever since she told that harmless fib, it kept coming up in casual conversation, and she can no longer live with the lie and wants the world to know what movie she really saw that day. She was so sorry and so racked with guilt for lying to us that she opened the shoebox and showed us her secret stash of candy and offered us Mike & Ikes as an apology.

How sweet is that? I know all of your kids and they are all great little people that fill us with pride. We are all very lucky.