Ew boy!

On Monday, Linda and I picked up our 19-year-old son after he finished his first year at SU, also known as the alma mater. It didn't take long for his friends to start making their presence known in our house as the front door seemed to be opening and closing on a regular basis while I attempted to get some sleep. Zach's core group of friends consists of many of the boys he met way back in elementary school, so it's always nice to see them and to see what's becoming of them.

If you are the parent of a boy, your son goes through their stages of life which can be identified by how they smell. When they are born, they smell like a baby. As they get a little older and before they are potty trained, they smell like $%&^!. Than they smell like dirt, unwashed gym clothes and other scents that are sure to tickle your nose.

At some point in their tweens, hormones kick in and their smell takes on whole new pungency. I remember when Zach and his friends were going through the bar mitzvah year, which very nicely exemplifies the two odors that tickled my olfactory the most: The before-the-party smell and the after-the-party smell.

Let's start with the after-party smell. It's a Saturday night and I have the late night pick-up. At the time, we had a minivan which held six young men (plus me) or should I say six young, dancing-all-night, sweaty, locker-room-smelling young men. It could be snowing and way below freezing out but the driver's window was open. At this age, boys have yet to discover deodorant but they have discovered ultra cheap cologne....
....which bring me back to the the before -the-party smell. At that time, every one of them wore Axe. If there is a nastier smell than a van full of boys wearing Axe, I have yet to discover it. And they never wore a little of it because when you're 13, if a little smells OK than the whole bottle must smell really good. My eyes are tearing up just thinking about those days.

But now my son is 19 and has spent a good portion of the last eight to nine months away from home. Honestly, I couldn't tell you what he smells like or what cologne he wears (it's not Axe anymore). I'm just happy to have him home for the next few weeks before he heads off to his job as a counselor at a sleep-away camp in the Berkshires. This year his bunk will consist of a group of 13-year-old boys. Now he gets to deal with them, their hormones and all the smells that come with them.

Ira's blog.