So, a few weeks ago, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition came out. This, you might think, would be a holiday in a lesbian home. But, sigh, we are here, we are queer and we are middle-age.
SOS is, however, a pre-adolescent boy.
SOS wanted to know whether we needed help going to the drug store. Excuse me? Our boy wanted to help with errands?
Maybe, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, our son blossomed into the son of G-d, as is every Jewish mother’s dream?
Well, no, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is on display and available at Rite-Aid.
“Dude, I will buy it for you, but you can’t show it to your friends, because we don’t have their parents’ permission, ok?”
“No, I am not ready to own it, E Mom.”
SIDEBAR: When SOS was 8 years-old, he asked everyone he met to buy him that years’ swimsuit edition. Just keeping the record straight.
“Ok, but you know I get it, bud. Mommy and I think women are beautiful.”
“E Mom, no offense, but I cannot talk to you about this, OK?”
All right, too much information for my son. I get it. I am not going to bond with him by scoping out cute girls. Although I could . . . .
We have to do this the cloak and dagger way. SOS gives me an exaggerated wink and says:
“E Mom, do you need anything at the drug store?”
“Why, yes, buddy, I do. Wanna come?”
We go to Rite Aid. I browse in the lotions and potions area, totally worried that I don’t have a visual on my son who is perusing magazines with pedophiles.
It is amazing how drug stores have Valu-Paks of anti-aging lotions. It is really amazing that a chain store succeeded where Vasco Di Gama did not. Fountain of youth, aisle 4, and now in easy to use and re-fill containers. Isn’t the modern world a wonder?
Alas, though, no Sports Illustrated. Only Maxim’s, which would do the trick any OTHER weekend but NOT on the last weekend for the swimsuit edition.
We soldiered on to Duane Reade, where I dawdled again in the lotions and potions aisle and took a brief survey of all the processed foods one can buy these days in drug stores. Are processed foods considered a drug or a food under the FDA?
I went to find SOS after an eternity of inventory research at Duane Reade. Maybe 20 minutes. Apparently I didn’t dawdle enough. Uh oh.
“Buddy, let’s go to a real book store and then I promise I will need a chocolate bar or a bottle of water on the way home, ok?”
At the book store, he was content with the animals of the Serengeti and the dynasties of pre-Communist China.
As promised, we returned to the drug store where I purchased things I didn’t need so that my son could marvel at the bodies of beautiful women.
We got home and I said, “you can go to your room if you want. Just wash your hands when you come out.”
I am nothing if not practical.
Don’t worry, Pearl and Will, no magazines are coming to camp, except the G-rated ones.
