Brotherly bickering and general fluffiness

When the boys were little, sometimes they would be sitting peacefully across the table from one another, and then suddenly the mood would change and one would say challengingly to the other, "You're fluffy!" or something equally nonsensical. A full-scale battle would then erupt within the blink of an eye. I realized then that seeking to maintain total domestic peace and harmony was simply not an option. Sometimes their brotherly communication patterns appear to require phases of aggressiveness, just as they require unbearable silliness at other times. Then I remember a scene one Christmas (at Pat's house?), when Dad and Joe were sent out to the garage to put pegs in a pole to hang up the stockings. When they didn't return, I went out to see what was going on and found them sitting there at either end of this ridiculous pole arguing and bickering and complaining and calling each other names like a pair of kindergarten kids. Two elderly, respectable, grey-haired gentlement behaving exactly like my sons calling each other "fluffy". When I think about it, I can actually recall quite a number of scenes like that between Dad and Joe and even Uncle Pat, I think. That reinforces my suspicion that relationships between brothers who are close in age and emotionally close, but different in character, engender communications patterns that are not necessarily intelligible to anyone outside this little "brother world".

At the moment there seems to be a considerable amount of fluffiness at our house.

Patrick was not happy about my recent blog post crediting Christopher with picking up well before I came home from a party. He wants a public apology, because he says he was the one that took care of everything. I was all set to write an apology, but then I mentioned it to Christopher, who hotly insisted that he was, in fact, the one who picked up, while Patrick, he claims, just sat on the couch watching him and complaining about what Christopher's friends had been doing that evening. Then the story somehow became a bit complicated, as Christopher kept trying to deflect my attention from Patrick's complaints, since I was quite interested in hearing more details, but without straying from his account of Patrick "just sitting on the couch and comp..." When questioned about details, Patrick was not at all forthcoming either, but he stuck to his account that he had done all the tidying, so that I was beginning to seriously wonder what had really been going on that so much tidying was required.

In the end, it sounded as though The Cat in the Hat must have been here, rather than an indeterminate number of teenage boys.

But on the whole, it seems to make no difference whether it's a question of washing dishes, taking care of laundry, homework, visitors, why Christopher always needs to hug someone or how sarcastic Patrick is, or who has the salt at the table: somebody always seems to be fluffy these days.

Fortunately I know this doesn't last forever, even if it will probably go on for the rest of their lives.