![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/CouchBoys.jpg\" "\\"CouchBoys\\"")
A perk of writing from home is being here when my son comes home from half-days of school with his high school friends.\u00a0 I\u2019m usually in the other room, out of the fray, but I like to pop into the kitchen to say \u201cHi!\u201d \u00a0It’s not a bad idea to know who is in my house.<\/p>\n
I can’t help noticing certain things about teenage boys in packs:<\/p>\n
They tend buy provisions on the way over in case the house is short on key foodstuffs: grape pop, root beer, ramen noodles and chips.<\/p>\n
They eat before they do anything else.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re happy to share with me.<\/p>\n
They have a special predilection for the orange-hued food group: Clementines, Mac \u2018n\u2019 Cheese, Bar-b-Cue chips, and Cheetos.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re friendly and polite.<\/p>\n
They will rearrange furniture to clear space to play Risk on the floor, and then play for a very long time.<\/p>\n
They like to pack into small rooms.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re loud.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t mind closing the doors so their noise doesn\u2019t distract me.<\/p>\n
Some of them wear knit hats indoors on warm days.<\/p>\n
They never wear coats.<\/p>\n
They talk a lot, all at once.<\/p>\n
Some of them have wild hair, and others sport different facial hair from week to week.<\/p>\n
Their shoes are unbelievably large and they pile them in masses by the door.<\/p>\n
They bring their own computers so they can all play computer games at once.<\/p>\n
They sing.<\/p>\n
They like a new Frisbee.<\/p>\n
They like to play ping pong.<\/p>\n
They leave the stove on after they make Mac \u2018n\u2019 Cheese.<\/p>\n
They spontaneously clear their dishes.<\/p>\n
They argue.<\/p>\n
They have a private language of common, insular references and scatological humor.<\/p>\n
They laugh a lot.<\/p>\n
They leave things behind when they go: sweatshirts, phones, and sports bottles.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n
I know they\u2019ll be back.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A perk of writing from home is being here when my son comes home from half-days of school with his high school friends.\u00a0 I\u2019m usually in the other room, out of the fray, but I like to pop into the kitchen to say \u201cHi!\u201d \u00a0It’s not a bad idea to know who is in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-ha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1680,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions\/1680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}