Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The Depravity of Today's Youth

My daughter has a friend named Alex, the nicest 13 year old boy I have ever met. He's really close to not only my older daughter but the younger one as well and we all look for excuses to have Alex come over. Last year, we bought him his own Steeler jersey and dragged him to the Steeler bar with us to cheer them on, and he's been going with us ever since (of course, this year was absolutely insane). The kid is just a good sport, he's very respectful and fun, and puts up with my hormomal daughter better than anyone else can.
Three weeks ago, before the Steeler game against the Broncos, we picked Alex up on the way to the Steeler bar. (Side note: for those of you who might be thinking, "Wait a minute. Steph is actually taking her children to a bar?!" Let me remind you that it's a Steeler bar, thank you very much, and I've been a die hard Steeler fan for a long time, so I think raising my children to get behind a team, stick with it, cheer them on through good times and bad - well that's just good parenting!! :) Anyway, I digress...so we're on our way to the bar and we stop by to get Alex. We get into a pretty bland conversation about what he had been doing all weekend when he tells us that he went to the movies the night before. He and his friends were so bored with the movie that they left early. How bad does a movie have to suck to get a bunch of 13 year old boys to leave? All they do is screw around in there anyway. So he goes on to tell us that out of sheer boredom they went into the pet store next door and decided to buy a bunch of Mexican Fighting Fish, and a few harmless little goldfish, to throw in the fountain outside and see what would happen. Am I the only one who finds this hysterical? If my daughter came home with that story, I couldn't even be mad, I would just be impressed with her creativity. So to continue the story, Alex said that when they were inside the pet store, the woman behind the counter wouldn't sell them the fish because she said they were fighting fish, they were dangerous to other fish (duh),and she wouldn't sell them to the boys because they were under 18. So they went outside and stopped the first customer to walk in the pet store and asked him to buy them the Mexican Fighting Fish. I stopped him at that point, laughing hysterically and yelled, "You pimped fish!!!" How funny is that?! I can see it now...Alex and his friends standing outside the pet store, saying something like this..."Psst...Dude. Can you score us a couple of fighting fish while you're in there? Here's an extra five-spot if you do." Ha! I love that kid.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

that is so cute and funny. he does sound like quite a kid. and in this day when kids are into all sorts of things, i'd be thrilled to have a kid trying to pimp fish. lol.

Jenni said...

(Phew!) I totally thought you were going to say they ate them. Thank god.

My friend Laura came home one day the week after Easter only to find her younger sons room destroyed by shattered colored malted milk balls. Apparantly when she got the story out of them they told her that they were bored and were throwing the malted balls at the ceiling fan, watching them explode when they hit the blades. She actually had to leave the room because she didn't want to laugh infront of them because they were supposed to be punished. She made them clean it up and when they started the vaccum cleaner she laughed her ass off in her bedroom.

Boys rule.

John said...

Way to go Alex!! Great creativity. And way to go Steph for cheering him on, kids need kudos when they're cool like that.

Steph said...

Jen, what's funny about you saying you were afraid they were going to eat them, is that one time back when I was a youth minister, I remember trying to explain to a couple of the men on our staff why bobbing for goldfish was not a great idea for our weekend service. I was the one who got all the parent calls and although they didn't think any kid could be fast enough to catch a goldfish, I knew they would and probably be gross about it just to show off!
Sure enough - some gross kid catches the damn thing and chews it up, and guess who had to put a good spin on it for the parents? Yup - ME!

Oh, jeez. I just failed my own word verification.

Anonymous said...

Hello, Michele sent me. Glad to hear your pleasure in telling. Got to get kids hooked on sports young. :-)

Where there's a 13-year-old will, there's a way. So, was there one that got away? Wonder what happened to the goldfish.

carmilevy said...

That's damn funny - unless you're the fish, of course.

Then again, they should learn not to fight. Rise up against your genes, little fish! Learn to make peace!

Ah, whatever. Fish will always be fish. And boys in and near pet stores will always be boys.

Lovely story.

Karen said...

Pimping fish. Hey, that's a great name for a rock band!

Michele sent me. Rock on Alex! By the way, congrats to you Steelers fans.