The Scene

It was a lazy Sunday morning. The weekend blizzard gave us a great excuse to turn on the fireplace, read the paper and neglect personal hygiene. The two younger boys were playing upstairs. I could hear the intermittent laughing, then yelling, then laughing, then name-calling.

The oldest, who will be 13 in a month, was in his room with the door shut, as this is how he chooses to spend most of his time at home these days. Understanding a teen’s need for privacy, we let him barricade himself in there most of the time, requiring him to come show his face for meals and to do a few chores. This Sunday morning we assumed he was in there playing his XBOX. (Unlike most teens, he doesn’t sleep in.)

So imagine our surprise when at 11 a.m. this strange creature, wearing only boxer shorts, emerged groggily from his boy cave. “I just woke up!” he said, eyes still half closed. I recognized that recently changed, husky voice, but there’s no way that could be my son standing there.

He was not that tall when he went to bed.

The Investigation

I stared at him in disbelief. His once-pudgy gut was now sucked in a bit, and the space between the top of waistband and the top of his shoulders had never looked so long. I had noticed his legs thinning out and stretching, but this morning they looked like they could’ve belonged to Manute Bol.

I noticed my mouth was still hanging open, and I closed it before I started to drool. “What happened to you?” I managed to spit out.

“What are you talking about?” he asked in that annoyed tone he’s perfecting.

“Um, I think you seriously grew a foot last night,” I answered. I knew that when my boys were little, they’d often sleep longer during a growth spurt, but it had never occurred to me that the same thing would happen during puberty. And especially not so dramatically.

My husband looked up from his laptop then. And I knew this would be the test. If I’m too emotional or I exaggerate a little, he always balances it out by being low-key and none-too-impressed. It’s so exasperating.

The Findings

“Go stand by your dad,” I told my son, and I watched my husband’s face closely as our half-naked teenage giant lumbered into the family room toward him.

I could immediately tell that it wasn’t just me.

My husband’s eyes widened as he broke out in a huge, incredulous grin. “Isn’t he taller?” I asked, excited to be right for once, to which he replied, “Uh, yeah,” and laughed. We looked at each other, asking silent questions like, “Is this normal? Do kids really grow literally overnight? Is he some freak of nature? Do we need to take him to the emergency room to see if he strained any ligaments?”

“Stand next to your mom,” my husband instructed instead, and my boy and I stood back-to-back (or butt-to-butt, as we were both blessed with healthy-sized hind ends).

I am still a quarter of an inch taller.

But I’m sure that will have changed by tomorrow.

We’ll update the investigation when further evidence warrants.