Living with two boys is an exercise in stink management.
Our two sons, ages 11 and 16, are responsible for all manner of stinkage. Soiled socks. Putrid gym bags. Milk cartons shoved under their beds.
Then there's ordinary body odor, that ever-present, room-temperature ripeness that ripples through the air whenever one of them walks by. After soccer practice, the smell slaps you in the face. Plants wilt in their wake. Smoke alarms trip. Insects in the crawlspaces run for the exits.
Bless their hearts, boys cannot smell themselves and therefore have no true appreciation for their awfulness. Through some quirk of adolescence, they become nose-blind to human perspiration. You know a boy stinks when the family dog - fresh from investigating poop piles in the backyard - puts his nose under a blanket and begins to gag.
Not only do boys stink, but they become militant when you confront them about it.
A simulated argument with our 11-year-old goes something like this:
"Son, it's time for your shower."
"Why-uh?"
"Because you smell like a Sasquatch?"
"What's a Sasquatch?"
"You know, Bigfoot."
"How do you know Bigfoot stinks?"
"Because I'm a reporter and I know things."
"What?"
"Stop arguing with me and get in the bathtub!"
"But I don't even smell bad, Daddy. Here, smell me."
Boys, it seems, have not been informed of their constitutional rights against self-incrimination. I have never, ever seen the "smell me" defense work.
Fortunately, God provides balance in all things. At the precise moment he has made our boys smell bad, he has also given them incredibly sweet personalities.
The night before his first day in middle school, the 11-year-old lay down beside me on our king-size bed and admitted that he was extremely nervous.
"It won't kill you if you go a whole night without sleep, will it, Daddy?" he asked.
"No, buddy, it won't kill you. But the trick to going to sleep is to fool your mind into thinking about something else."
With that, I launched into a made-up bedtime story like I would have told him at age 7 or 8. I saw him smile.
I invented a character named Malcolm the Moth. I imagined that Malcolm had flown through the back door when I took out the trash and had subsequently become caught in a lampshade.
In the story, a young boy with the same name as our younger son came to Malcolm's aid by fashioning a tiny ladder out of a drinking straw so that the moth could climb out of the lampshade trap and rejoin the night.
"Thanks, Daddy," my son said sweetly as I finished the story. Then, he rolled over and drifted immediately off to sleep.
The next day, our older son - perhaps remembering his own anxieties at age 11 - helped little brother pick out his clothes for Day 1 of middle school, a hand-me-down print shirt and a pair of blue shorts. He also spent time at the kitchen table going over a map of the middle-school campus so his little brother wouldn't get lost on his first day.
Later, when I asked for a photo by the back door on the first day of school, our older son hugged his little brother close. For a 16-year-old boy, humoring a sentimental parent is a heavy lift.
I read this week that a journalist interviewing people in their 90s made a startling discovery. Among their biggest regrets was that their adult children had grown apart.
That, more than regrets over past jobs or personal relationships, is what kept old people up at night. The opposite of that regret is the deep satisfaction we feel as parents when we see open, honest, sibling love.
Dang it. Sometimes there's nothing as sweet to behold as two stinking boys. Let's hope it lasts forever - the sweetness, that is, not the stink.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.