What did mama say?

Now that Troy’s mobile, he’s heading off around the house to explore. I’ll set him down, and ten seconds later, he’s in another room. I’m constantly having to chase him around and bring him back. The worst part is that if we don’t let him go somewhere or touch something, then he takes that as a personal challenge to go there and touch that as much as possible. It’s as if the forbiddenness if it makes it sweeter.

His favorite, which he found right off, is messing with the entertainment system in the den. It has drawers with interesting little drawer-pull rings that pop out of the front of the drawer. It has glass doors that become reflective when the sun’s just right. And it has shelves with stuff that go right down to the floor. I have already moved all of the stuff off the bottom shelf, so he can’t mess with it, so now he likes to just climb into the shelf itself.

But due to his ever-increasing vanity and obsession with looking at himself in mirrors, he spends most of his time touching the glass doors. When my wife catches him doing this, she doesn’t immediately pick him up and move him like I usually do. Instead, she tries to reason with him so he learns to listen, right and wrong, and consequences to his actions. I personally think he’s too young to understand, because we still aren’t communicating with words yet. So telling him something and expecting him to reason that out seems a bit far-fetched. But she’s relentless. So all morning long, all I hear coming from the den is, “Troy, Troy. What did mama say? Are you supposed to be touching that? What did mama say?”

I don’t know why, but every time I hear this, I laugh, because it reminds me of the movie The Waterboy with Adam Sandler. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a guy in Louisiana with an overprotective mother. He works as an aquatic engineer for the local university football team. After years of everyone thinking he’s slow in the head and abusing him, he finally snaps. He ends up fighting back and completely leveling one of the players with a tackle. The coach is so impressed that he immediately recruits the guy to play on the team as a linebacker. However, his mother in against the idea, so he must do it in secret. Since he’s been homeschooled his entire life, all of his information comes from his mother. Often, her information is incorrect and misguided, but it’s all he has to draw on. So anytime anyone asks him a question, he replies, “My mama says...” and then adds some outlandish viewpoint from his mother.

So when my wife utters those words, I hear Bobby Boucher’s voice echoing them in my head, “What did mama say? What did mama say?” “My mama says, ‘Touching the glass is from the devil!’” And I wonder if Troy will say that kind of stuff when he’s older to explain to his friends why he makes the decisions he does. “Because my mama said.”