The Fixit Shoulders

Climber is going to a party this weekend, a 14th birthday celebration for one of the girls in his class.  This is the same crew he went trick-or-treating with on Halloween, without adult supervision, to a vaguely specified location a few streets away, which was fine except he said he'd walk home and when it got to dark-time, he hadn't come home and wasn't answering his phone, and I got a bit anxious about him walking alone in the dark. Well, it turned out he'd lost his phone during the trick-or-treating because he'd gone dressed up as a ninja, and as such had done a lot of ninja dives and somersaults during their travels (quite understandable), and the phone had come out of his pocket.  That whole tale is very typical of Climber.  The phone was found and returned to us next day, so no harm done.



This is his crew, and for the sake of fairness, here is a picture of Cherub and his friends in their Halloween garb.  Cherub went as a pirate, arrrr.

 

I got to stay home at Halloween and hand out lollies to the local kids in the area.  I think Halloween is settling into being a thing here. The 'trick' part of 'trick-or-treat' seems to have disappeared, which is good, and the kids know to only knock at the houses where Halloween decorations are displayed, ie willing participants. (I prefer that, small children dressing up and asking nicely for sweets is one thing, but threatening harm to your property if you don't cough up is quite another!)  So as it stands, the Melbourne version of Halloween is quite a fun evening, with community spirit and friendliness and adorable dress-ups. My kids certainly enjoy it, and are still working their way through the substantial haul of sugar they received. Our dentist will be able to holiday somewhere nice.

Anyway, back to the party.  Climber asked if I could take him shopping to buy a new shirt to wear, so we did that yesterday.  It was actually really nice walking round shopping with him, although I could sense he was hoping he wouldn't run into anyone he knew, sigh.  We eventually found a shirt we liked in a department store, a boys' size 16.



We'd tried a few men's size-extra-smalls on, which were a good fit across his swimmer's shoulders, but were too long for him.  I was telling Fixit about this later and he shook his head and said the Curse of the Fixit Shoulders.  This made me laugh.  Shoulders like theirs will never be a curse. Climber just has to grow into his.