The Icing Is In The Devil's Details

The #1 son graced the Mansion with his presence this weekend. In so many ways, it was as if he'd never left.

My kitchen became a darkroom with light. He mixed noxious chemicals for photo developing. I bought him lunch in town and hauled it home. He went out to supper with a Robot Boy. They're like the Rocket Boys in October Sky. But with robots. He took my debit card and did business with The Devil. He stayed up past midnight and tormented me. The usual. Good times.

Did you know that #1 had never seen The Breakfast Club? Yet he swore that at the end, as Judd Nelson walked across the football field with his fist in the air, the song playing over the credits was "Don't You (Forget About Me)." I begged to differ. I said that was John Cusack in Say Anything. Even though I've never seen that movie. Or the end credits on the lawnmower in Easy A. Which I've seen about 20 times. So #1 plopped down on the basement couch, wrapping his greasy face and head in MY chartreuse polka-dotted soft blankie, and his hairy sweaty feet in The Pony's zebra-striped soft blankie, just to wait until the end credits, to gloat.

Kids these days. He bought into the Saturday detention in the library scenario. And the taping together of butt cheeks. Even the weed stashed in a locker and retrieved and smoked by the detainees in that library. But he was curious about that scene where Ally Sheedy had stolen Anthony Michael Hall's wallet and memorized his vital statistics off his driver's license. And the subsequent disgorging of Ms Weirdo Sheedy's purse.

"Did people in the 80s really sit around looking in each other's wallets?"

"Um. No. It's a movie."

"I thought that was weird."

Seriously. Of all the things. We both got a hoot out of the TV-language dubbing. And then rolled the credits. Let's just say that one of us was right. And one of us is still kind of one-third right. Easy A. Check it out.

Just before the movie bonding, #1 let it be known that he had bought cookies at The Devil's Playground with my plastic, and that he wanted me to bake them before he left on Sunday. Never mind that I had done his laundry, and had my own Deviling to do, and we were BBQing for his last lunch so he could take some leftovers back. "Oh, come on. Make them for your son. It's not that hard. They're in a box. I saw them and I thought, 'Mmm...caramel apple cookies. I have to have them.' Please..."

"Let me see the box." #1 ran upstairs for his cardboard-contained delicacy. Oh, let's get real! He hollered for The Pony to bring it down.

"See? Don't they look good? Caramel apple cookies with caramel icing!"

"Where's the icing?"

"WHAT? It's in the box. Isn't it?"

"Um. No. That comes separately. It says so right on the front of the box."

"NO! That's why I bought them! I saw that picture. They look SO GOOD with that icing!"

"Yeah. Well. I can bake them. But there's no icing."

"Can you get some when you go to town in the morning?"

"I can look. But I have to bake the cookies before I go to town."

"I can wait for the icing. Dad is taking me out to breakfast, anyway."

Of course The Devil did not have icing to match those cookies. He only carries about five different kinds now. You can never find anything at The Devil's Playground. But I picked up some hard shell caramel ice cream topping in a plastic squeeze bottle. I figure #1 can drizzle it over his cookies and put them in his mini fridge.

Thank the Gummi Mary that he is not planning to be a civil engineer. No bridge constructed after his graduation would be safe. His stunning lack of attention to detail concerns me.

"Don't worry, Mom. I'm only going to be working with electrical stuff."