Obviously, when I decided to write this story I knew I couldn’t use the proper term for the male anatomy.  I’m not sure the number of times you need to write a word for the Google-and-spam-filters powers that be to say, “Um, hi there, we’re going to slide you into our back red velvet-curtained room real quick” but I didn’t want to test it.  I’ve used the names “Johnson” and “Peter” a lot over the years because they are common in North Dakota and so far, so good, but I wasn’t sure one confident “Wee Willy Winkie” would put the whole thing over the edge.

“What do the kids these days call their hockey sticks?”  I asked my boys at dinner, except that I used the term they were expecting.

“Dih,” Fourteen and Ten said in unison without a second of hesitation.

“’Dih,’ like the first part of the word ‘Dictation’?” I asked, except, again, I used the term they were expecting.

“No, ‘Dih’ as in ‘Dih’,” Ten said.

“I can’t type that into the Internet for all the world to see,” I said.

“The Victorian term was ‘Gentlemen Usher’,” Kyle said, referencing his phone.

“I think I’ll use something random,” I said.  “Like ‘fiddle-faddle’.”

I love, love having sons.  I would have ten more, if I could.  Boys are goofy and weird and cuddly and wild and interesting and loving and funny and dopey.  There’s a TikTok trend for mothers to lay their heads in their sons’ lap and record their reactions.  Ninety percent of the children wrap their little arms around their mothers and snuggle in; the other ten percent either lick their faces or fart.  I can’t think of a more perfect representation of what it’s like to have a son.

Here is the Number One thing I’ve learned since becoming the mother of boys: If there is a fork in the road with one side leading towards a sunshiny, sparkling, clear, well-groomed, expected destination, and the other side gnarled and matted in brambles and shrouded in pitch black fog, a boy will think,

“Hmm, maybe I’ll check out this unknown side first, just to see what’s doing.”

Every single time.

This summer, Fourteen and his friends were at our house wasting time the way that summers are meant to be wasted.  After wasting time in the backyard on the deck, they decided to move to the front yard and see what kind of time could be wasted there.  To get to the front yard, they walked through the garage.  On the floor of the garage, they found a puck of hockey stick wax that had fallen out of Fourteen’s bag.  When finding a puck of hockey stick wax on the ground, the sunshiny path thing to do would be to 1) ignore it or, 2, even better) put it back in the bag where it belonged.

Naturally, they picked it up and started chucking it at one another.

After chucking the wax at one another for as long as that was fun, they put the hockey stick wax back in the bag and then biked over to the nearby elder care home to volunteer with the residents.

Just kidding.  They took the wax and drew a giant, hairy eight-foot fiddle-faddle on our driveway.

Later that evening, I came home from work and drove over that giant, hairy eight-foot fiddle-faddle.

“I’m not sure if you are aware, but there is a green fiddle-faddle on the driveway,” I said to Kyle, referencing the color of the hockey stick wax.

“Yes, I saw,” Kyle said, chuckling.  “I’ll give them overnight to admire their work and then wash it off tomorrow morning.”

The next morning, as I pulled my car out of the garage to go to work, Kyle pulled the pressure washer out of the shed to de-faddle the driveway.  When I returned home, the fiddle-faddle was still there. It was no longer green, however; it was black, making it much more visible than I had been before.

“What’s happening on the driveway?”  I asked.

“I can’t get the wax off,” Kyle said, no longer chuckling. “And now it seems to be under some kind of chemical reaction which is making it darker.”

“Oh, shucksaroonie,” I said, except that I used a different word.

For the next two weeks, Kyle tried every which way to remove the fiddle-faddle.  He scraped it.  He heated it up.  He used Dawn dish soap, which was my idea because it worked on oil-covered ducks but did not work on driveway wax.  Finally, he called a concrete guy we know.

“It should fade over the winter,” he said.  “Should.”

“If not,” Kyle said, “what’s the next step?”

“A new driveway?”  Our friend suggested.

“Maybe we should make those ding dongs clean up their ding dong,” I said.  “Give them something productive to do.”

“Maybe,” Kyle said, probably thinking of every single brambly pathway they could make it worse.  “Or maybe we could become the house with the fiddle-faddle.  They will put us on the list of town landmarks.”

“Exactly what I’ve always wanted,” I said.  “Let’s draw ten more.”

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Ten told me that the boys have named the driveway art “The Schlongatron.”  The photo above is of Kyle holding a zucchini he grew, which I have also named “The Schlongatron.”

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Connie Selle, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as a global hockey showcase of the best players under the age of 20 in the world. (Valley News Live)

Here’s the first paragraph of my most recent column in the Grand Forks Herald: “Recently, the New York Times was one of several dozen newspapers nationwide to author an article on the life and influence of our own Marilyn Hagerty. In the comment section, a reader named Walker wrote, ‘This story makes me wish I grew up in Grand Forks. There are so many interesting people like Ms. Hagerty, and the vast majority of them go unheralded.’” (Grand Forks Herald)

Emerado’s Peyton Gornowicz and Magnus Lugo have authored their second book – campfire stories – together. (Grand Forks Herald)

I know the focus of the story is that the students at Westside Elementary taped their principal to the wall, but I think the bigger thing is that the community donated $39,000?! (Fargo Forum)

There’s another North Dakotan suiting up for the Minnesota Vikings. (Grand Forks Herald)

Ready to get into the spooky spirit?  The movie theater in East Grand Forks is hosting free Halloween movies all month. (Facebook)

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