Marrying Man and The Scotsman

I love to talk about my kids, mostly because there's always so much to talk about.

My wife passed along some news about my 8-year-old son, Benjamin. Apparently Benjamin is ready to get married and have children. It's true. He decided that the other day. I talked with him about it two days ago and received confirmation. He says he's ready.

"Well son, do you have someone in mind you'd like to marry?"

"Yes."

"Is she in your class."

"Yes."

"Is she nice?"

"Yes."

"Have you talked with her about this?"

"No."

"Well, son, that might be a problem."

I guess I'm going to log this off as marriage counselling, though I don't think much will come of the incident.

The other story concerns my 12-year-old son, William. He has an upcoming history project where he's supposed to dress as a famous historical figure. We've had the opportunity to travel to Scotland on several occasions during our assignment to Germany, and he's become quite taken with the country and the culture. The fact that I have Scot ancestry through my mother pushed this over the edge for him. He decided he was going to dress as William Wallace, of "Braveheart" fame. We ordered him a kilt (though Wallace probably did not wear a kilt in reality--a fact he is choosing to conveniently ignore) which arrived several weeks ago. Yesterday was the big dress rehearsal and rather than hand-carry his costume and change at school, he chose to wear his kilt all day. He got lots of attention and faced the inevitable giggles from the girls in his class ("You're wearing a skirt!") with bravery and much fortitude. Not only did he wear it to/from school, he wore it after school and to piano lessons and for the rest of the day right up until bedtime. His mother had to intercede at that point as the kilt was dirty and would probably chaff him during the night.

Two acorns that didn't fall very far from the tree...