Children refuse to stop growing

The problem with summer is fertilizer. Between that, the heat, the rain and the sunshine, it makes things grow way too much, way too fast.

Now that's a good thing if you're raising corn, but when you're raising children, it's a pain in the patootie. I grabbed a pair of shoes the other day to run the garbage down to the road and it wasn't until I'd trundled the bin all the way out to the mailbox that I realized the shoes felt funny. I looked down -- yep, they were Nikes -- but they weren't my Nikes, and they were a little too big.

They were my 10-year-old son's.

I could be humble -- and a liar -- here and say I wasn't surprised that Buzz's feet caught up with mine because mine are sooooo tiny, but the fact is, I've got size 10 flippers (11 in some brands) and this means my third son, like his two big brothers, is going to be another giant. And because of all the sun and rain and heat and fertilizer (bananas and Pop Tarts) he's ingested this summer, he's going to be a giant pretty quickly.

Hellooo, Goodwill.

All those shorts and T-shirts and jeans I got him just this spring are going to be headed back to my favorite store, and I'll be coming back with sizes like YB (Young Behemoth), MG (Major Goliath) and WAYFTC (What ARE you feeding that child?!)

Of course, if Ben had been obliging and solid like Scott, I could have just handed down clothes. But no, Ben had to be whip-thin, which meant Scott's clothes actually made it to Goodwill and Good Sam while they were still in good condition. And Ben's clothes, well, even if Buzz was another skeleton kid like the middle child, none of Ben's clothes have ever survived his attention. I have to hide jeans over the summer so Ben will have some to wear to school that don't have the knees ripped out. After working outside this summer, building stage sets (Obligatory plug for the Shakespeare Festival here), he has the most bizarre tan -- white thighs and shins, but the brownest knees you'll ever see.

I always considered myself lucky growing up, because I never had to deal with hand-me-downs very much. I was almost a foot taller than my sister, so I never got to wear her old clothes. Because we had totally opposite tastes in clothes, this made me a very happy camper. She was into, ummm, dresses. Eww. I was all tomboy, and if I got anybody's clothes, it was my brothers', until puberty kicked in and jeans and shirts were uncomfortably snug in places they never had been before.

But then, that was good, too, because it meant I got all-new clothes. Looking back, I now send silent apology Number 456 to my Mom, for having to buy new clothes for me. Spending most of my waking life on horseback, I was as rough on my clothes as Ben is on his. For that matter, I still am.

Another reason I had trouble passing clothes down from son to son is they have wildly different tastes. Scott, the oldest, likes plaid and green. And green plaid. Seersucker in the spring and summer, flannel in the fall in winter, but always green, always plaid, and always worn over a black T-shirt.

Ben likes the black T-shirts, too, but he wears them over long-sleeved shirts, a "style" that was popular when I was in high school, and I didn't much like it then, either. Scott wouldn't wear jeans that were too loose, especially after he lost all that weight, and I can't ever remember seeing him in a pair that had more damage than a little fraying around the bottom. If I patched all of Ben's jeans together out of the bits and pieces he wears in public, I might get one pair that wouldn't have me pretending not to know him when we're out in public together. And his jeans are often too loose simply because it's hard to find jeans that are 29 inches in the waist and 38 inches in the leg.

Buzz, affable, easy going Buzz, will wear just about anything -- as long as there is some sort of cartoon creature dealing mayhem to another cartoon creature on it. I'm just tickled that the style of wearing Spongebob or Bugs Bunny T-shirts has expanded into adult wear, because at the rate Buzz is growing, the only clothes I'll be getting for him out of the kids' section will be, well, nothing. It was bad enough when he outgrew the cartoon underwear ...

-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazettte. She can be reached by e-mail at mreeves@t-g.com.