Great Wolf Part 3: Fenrises Gone Wild
WELL okay, he didn't really go wild. But he definitely asserted some of that teenage independence. The first thing the kids wanted to do was to go in the waterpark, of course. I was a little concerned about this, because there was only one of me, and two of them. Fenris traditionally likes crazy-big waterslides, and O most definitely does not. He's more of a wave pool guy. So I was trying to figure out how to be in two places at the same time, when Fenris smugly pointed to a sign on the wall that read "Children under 12 must be accompanies by an adult at all times." "I'm 13," he pointed out, in case I'd forgotten.
We all went in the wave pool for awhile. Then Fenris wanted to go on some gigantic slides. "I'll just go by myself," he said blithely. KNIFE TO THE HEART! There was a time when he wouldn't go on those unless we went together in a double tube. Then he got past that and wanted his own tube, but he also wanted me to go with him. Not this time! He grabbed a tube and hiked his butt up the tall, tall stairs to the big tubes. I was tremendously proud of him, but yeah, it stung a bit!
Eventually the guys got hungry, and we left the waterpark to get some lunch. We changed into dry clothes. O wanted to start MagicQuest, the cool interactive game. At that point, Fenris wasn't really interested. He had his eye fixed on the arcade. "Okay," I say, "We'll do the game for an hour, then the arcade for an hour." "Moh-ohm!" He griped. "Just give me some money for tokens, and I'll play by myself for awhile. I'll come find you guys when I'm done." That's when I noticed the dotted line between his eyes and a pack of tween girls.
I gave him the twenty bucks in the hall, so he wouldn't have to be seen in the arcade with his mom.
O played MagicQuest for about an hour, then sure enough, Fenris came and found us. He decided he was interested in the game after all, so we got him a wand and he got started. But he didn't want to do the same quests Orion was doing, because he'd already SEEN that stuff and Orion found it FIRST and he wanted to discover things HIMSELF! So he took off on a separate quest. For the next several hours, we'd run into him from time to time. He and O would have a quick huddle, exchange tips about where to find what magic object, and then Fenris would go back on his errant knight path.
Finally, on one of our random meet-ups with Fenris, he told us he wanted to go back to the water park. "But I'm still playing!" O hollered. Fenris rolled his eyes. "I can go by myself, you know. I AM 13."
I had to think about that one for a minute. There's a difference between all of us being in the water park and the kids doing different things, and Fenris being in the water park by himself. But he's a good swimmer, and Great Wolf seems to have a lifeguard about every ten feet along any water's edge. "Okay," I said, however reluctantly.
About an hour later, Orion had finished his quest, and he wanted to go to the water park too. We got changed up, and went in. I looked around for Fenris, just a little anxiously. I spotted him by the big slides, talking to a couple fo teenage girls. Smiling like the cat who ate the canary, he sauntered up to me. "Go guess what?" he said. "You know those really big slides where you have to have two or more people to go on them?" "Yep," I sez. "Well, if I look for girls in twos or threes and ask them really nicely, they let me go on the rides with them!"
Yep. Mr. Slyboots had been scamming rides on giant water-waffles with teenage girls the whole time I'd been fretting about him. It was a more confident young fellow who left Great Wolf that evening.
It's true, snipping away at the apron strings is a painful process for the mom involved. But it's also pretty awesome to watch your little boy starting to turn into a young man.