The Swede and The Superman Pants!

The Swede and The Superman Pants!

OK, so here we are August 2012 and we are welcoming another exchange student into our home. Unlike the boy, where we only had 10 days to prepare, we had a couple of months. That had its interesting challenges too. It was almost too much time to prepare, if there is ever such a thing. And yet, we still didn’t get things done. This is mostly because I have no sense of responsibility when something spontaneous arises. Case in point: We have had a mirror to hang on his wall for about 2 months. It is STILL leaning on the wall on the floor next to the sticky things we need to put on the four corners and stick it up. REALLY? Yes, really.

We completely re-did the bedroom for the Swede, painted, new carpet, etc. When speaking with the boy on this, we had discussed this for months while HE was here to update the room and instead we went to NYC every weekend or downtown. Priorities, priorities….

I have already enrolled the Swede with me in two fantasy football pools, a pick em league and a fantasy league. Not sure if in the handbook it outlines gambling as a no-no, but that would require us to actually read it. We realized we were rule breakers long ago, so no need to verify. We named a team THE SWEDE to strike fear in the hearts of the poor sots we are playing against. This kid knows every stat of every player of every team since the beginning of time. I have no idea how he doesn’t have numbers and facts falling out of his ears. I look and watch and wait for it to happen. Its impossible for a person to retain this data. I am exploiting it and proud to do so.

The Swede is 17, introspective and speaks beautiful English. To top it off, his grammar is better than mine, as his grasp of the English language . Awkward. He has a penchant for pajama bottoms and we just picked up a pair of Superman jammie pants. I mentioned that we needed school supplies (because we only had 2 months to get prepared) so off to WalMart we go on Tuesday. What does this have to do with jammie bottoms. WELLLLL…..I explained that a favorite past time is watching the freak flags fly at the local WalMart and that people wear their jammies there all the time. He happened to be in his jammies (Superman) and said he should just go in those. BAD HOST MOTHER, I agreed. It seems that every other parent in the tri-state region had to go and get supplies. It was full contact shopping. Someone took a freaking notebook out of our cart because it was the last one! WTF!!! I had to do a coupla cart blocks and throw some elbows, but we came out unscathed with some of what we needed.

We went back to the camping and hunting section just for kicks. You never know who/what might be lurking back there. He was astonished that you could buy a 3 ft machete for 6.99 hanging for purchase in a regular aisle….did you know that? Packaged up like a pair of head phones. I got him to put on a Camo Jacket though with his superman pants, then handed him a bow and arrow, he fit in there real good.

Think to yourself, you probably don’t wear tube tops or jammies to WalMart, right? You probably have never had anyone comment on your clothes while at WalMart and say, hey “awesome pants” because you were actually wearing REAL PANTS. The Swede, on his first visit, got exactly that. A kid in the seat of the shopping cart yells over to The Swede “HEY AWESOME SUPERMAN PANTS!” and so it begins……