RIVER CITY JOURNAL: WHY PARENTS HAVE CHILDREN ... THERE MUST BE A REASON

Excuse me for a moment while parental pride and the joys of fatherhood are scooped up with the used Christmas wrappings.

The holidays mean family dinners where relatives you barely know and rarely see tell you intimate details about events from your past that never happened. Some people call these get-togethers reunions. Others call them an excuse to live in a different time zone or volunteer for overseas military duty.

In our case -- that being my wife and I -- we have much closer relatives to set the record straight, as it were, when family memories are relived around the holiday dinner table. We are so fortunate.

We have sons.

In addition to the job of correcting most of the details of any family story told by one of his parents, our younger son also has assumed the responsibility for setting the record straight on his personal preferences. If his age-advantaged parents remember that his favorite color was blue, he will go to great pains to let the whole world know it was red or polka-dot or just about anything but blue. Then look at what he is wearing: blue jeans, blue shirt, blue ... .

Moreover, younger son has adopted a conversational style that includes being at opposite poles on almost any subject raised by his parents -- who, it turns out, possessed one useful skill: writing checks. With the end of college tuition and all related expenses, the manly assertions of adulthood have increased proportionately. Here is how the I-can-disagree-with-you-on-any-subject dialogue goes:

"Would you like to go to a movie with us?"

"Sure, if there's anything worth seeing."

"How about 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.'?"

"That's not worth seeing."

Several months go by. He is visiting with his older brother. They are talking about movies.

Older son: "Seen any good movies lately?"

Younger son: "I think 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' was about the last good movie ever made."

In planning for the holiday meals, my wife put "chips" on the grocery list, intending said chips to be eaten with leftover ham sandwiches on Christmas Day. Before she went to the supermarket, she asked younger son, "What kind of chips would you like?"

"I don't eat chips," came the reply.

Wednesday evening, the remains of the ham and all the fixings for sandwiches were laid out, help-yourself style, on the kitchen counter. First in line was younger son, who had to wait while everyone else fixed their sandwiches. He passed the time by devouring the mound of Fritos on his plate.

Younger son left Thursday morning, driving to Boston to spend a week with his older brother. Their plan -- or, at least, what little of the plan parents are entitled to know -- is to enjoy Boston for a week and then hit both coasts within five days. In between will be a visit (brief, of course) with parents in Missouri, a stop to rent a truck and load younger son's belongings in Salina, Kan., drive to Laramie, Wyo., for a visit with a friend, then on to Logan, Utah, younger son's new home, find a place to live, unload the truck and head for San Francisco for a few days.

He left before the icy rain and snow started here. As good parents we fretted all day, checking The Weather Channel frequently to see where the most miserable driving conditions were, hoping all the time he would check in along the way. (By the way, parents earn no points for worrying. It just goes with the territory.)

In the middle of our meteorological updates, my wife remembered all those movies we had seen when the boys were young, the sci-fi movies and the entire "Star Wars" trilogy and more blood-and-guts thrillers than you could shake a stick at. "Now they won't go to a movie with us," she said somewhat sadly.

Of course, we don't need someone to A. pay for our tickets, B. give us a ride to and from the theater or C. keep the concession stand afloat during hard economic times.

I keep reminding my wife that some day, surely, our sons will have children of their own. I hope they have sons too. If they do, it will be proof that there is a God.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.