How many 13-year-olds does it take to make a pot of coffee?

Scenes from a remote tropical location where one suburban mommy has gone to reconnect with her close friends, but has instead been left babysitting their posse of 13-year-old boys while they are at work.

Somewhere in South Florida, 8:17 a.m.:
The Mommy/Houseguest has just been awakened by three teenage boys who burst into the room where she is sleeping on a fold-out couch. The room also houses a home office and the boys have their glassy-eyed sights on the electronics.

They will spend the next six hours navigating three computers, a game system and an assortment of multi-level, multi-player pirate and baseball games. They will also walk all over the guest sheets.

Mommy/Houseguest: GET OUT OF HERE!

Boys: When are you getting up? We need to get on the computer.

Mommy/Houseguest: You have got to be kidding. I am going to kill all of you as soon as I have had my coffee.

Boys: So you're going to get up?

Mommy/Houseguest: Get out of here. Make me a pot of coffee and I will think about it.

The boys leave and clamor into the kitchen, where they crowd around "Mr. Coffee" and stare at his intimidating array of features, which include exactly one button. It is labeled "start."

Boy 1: "I've watched my dad do it before, but there are measurements involved."

Boy 2: "I am not responsible for any damage to the coffee maker."

Boy 1: "You put, like, water in, and you put a filter in there..."

Boy 2: "I know a secret way, but it involves maple syrup."

Boy 3: "Where's the on-off button?"

Boy 1: "Why is there a hole in the lid do you think?"

Boy 3: "That's where the coffee goes, you dolt."

Boy 1: "O.K., there should be like a box of - I found the coffee filters. They're wrap-around. You know how to work wrap-around coffee filters?"

Boy 3: "We have no freaking idea how to make coffee."

The Mommy/Houseguest cannot take it anymore. How did she and her friends manage to raise such incompetents? She sighs deeply, rolls her eyes and heads to the kitchen, where she is greeted with enthusiasm, followed by a stampede.

Boy 3: "Wait! she's up! We don't have to."

Exit boys.

Comments

Note to self: teach Ronen to make coffee as soon as he's old enough to safely handle glass carafe.

Also, mixed drinks.

Posted by: Rattling the Kettle | August 14, 2008 at 11:42 AM

Yeah. I have one of these here too. I would have smacked mine though....

Teaching them to make mixed drinks is a nice idea, can we teach them how to give shoulder massages too?

Posted by: Leanne | August 14, 2008 at 09:37 PM

Doesn't it kill you? They can navigate the Internet, fix a jammed computer, text five people with one hand and countless other advanced tasks, but ask them to make coffee, put laundry away and it's all .... I don't know what to do.
Two words: selective intelligence.
--MomZombie

Posted by: MomZombie | August 15, 2008 at 01:55 PM

Our older boy, now 15, was taught to make coffee at age seven. He can go from pot half full of old coffee, basket full of old grounds, to that wonderful happy hiss-drip of coffee being produced in under 90 seconds. [This is not a guess. He made me time him.]

In three years he will be graduated and off to some college and it will not be reasonable for us to ask him to come home twice a day to make us coffee. Yes. I'm sure that's right. Not reasonable.

Which is as good an answer as any to the question we're often asked: "Why did you have your two boys 10 years apart?"

Just sayin'.

Posted by: Robert K | August 15, 2008 at 02:05 PM

What a fabulous story, you've just made my monday! I grew up with 3 brothers and now 3 fully accomplished men will wait for my mom or I to make the after dinner coffe. - Boys/Men!

Posted by: Kalle C | August 18, 2008 at 08:50 AM

Oh, I have just so so happily read through a whole week of posts I missed while on vacation. Not happy that you are coffee-less in the needy early morning hours, mind you, just happy at your prose prowess.

I LOVE the post about the editors, by the way.

And this one? Well, all I can say is that as soon as my four year old is tall enough to load the grounds into the filter without producing a volcano's worth of "ash" on the counter, you can bet I'm taking your advice and teaching him how to make coffee.

Posted by: MommyTime | August 18, 2008 at 09:09 PM