Teenage boys are allergic to soap

The Boy seems to mostly live online through video games. Grand Theft Auto has given him a sense that he somehow knows how to drive and is permitted to give me advice. (Clearly he also enjoys living dangerously.) He also spends a great deal of time killing virtual zombies. He says it’s dirty work, but someone has to do it. I’ll come back to that.

Mostly he spends his time playing Minecraft, much to my persistent confusion. Grand Theft Auto and Zombie Island are fairly realistic. Even Far Cry and Halo are realistic if you ignore the fact he has so many guns and so much ammo that he’s clearly running through the battle zone pulling the virtual equivalent of his childhood little red wagon to carry it all in. (A detail I’d actually like the creators to just own up to and show because I’m dying to see.)

Minecraft is as far from realistic as you can get. Despite the uber-coolness of all these other games he plays with his friends, he spends most of his time in a world where the graphics are a throwback to my youth. Welcome back to the 16-bit world!

Enough of that. The Boy has some online friends that are real (as in I can watch them shake their heads in pity for him when I demand an answer as to just what is so exciting about a game with 80’s-era graphics) and he attended a birthday party this week for one of these young men. Now let’s return to the dirty job of Zombie Island.

Two words for young men who clearly have yet to discover the delights of young ladies and instead aspire to spend all summer inside battling virtual zombies: Please bathe.

Heavens boys! Just because you’re latch-key kids who cross paths with your parent(s) only briefly on alternating weekends doesn’t mean you can forgo basic hygiene. Getting a dozen thirteen to fourteen-year-olds together in an enclosed space was truly horrific. Worse, they didn’t notice.

Just because you’re battling virtual zombies doesn’t mean you need to smell like a real one. Or look like one. Laundry, boys, laundry! You’d think they were allergic to soap. I brought The Boy back and made him take another shower based on association alone. It was a lot like bathing a cat. Unfortunately, teenage boys are bigger. And whinier.

And back to the online nature of my son’s quality time with his friends. Before this week I was concerned, you might even say upset, about it. Not so much now.