Brendan the Brave

Do your children ever amaze you with their daring?  Do they ever make plans that leave you simultaneously awed at their desire to reach and worried that they are going to fall flat on their faces?  

Mine do.  And it is both thrilling and nerve-wracking.

To wit: read what my firstborn decided to do last weekend.

Homecoming is in a little less than a month, and people are starting to ask and be asked.  On a related tangent, it seems that these days, it is not enough to just ask someone.  Rather, you have to ask in some kind of creative and public way.

So Brendan decided to enlist the help of a couple of his cheerleader friends and ask a girl at the football game last Friday night.

In front of the whole school.

Correction-- in front of the whole school and a bunch of parents.

Yikes!

He arranged the whole thing himself.  The idea was that the row of cheerleaders would hold up signs that spelled out the girl's name on one side and then flip the signs over to read "HOMECOMING??!" on the other.  Then he would burst through the line and wait for her to come down and accept his invitation.  The cheerleaders even turned it into a cheer for him.

I helped him get ready by helping him paint the signs for the cheerleaders to hold.

I also helped him pick out some flowers (red Gerber daisies--red so she would feel like she really received  flowers and Gerber daisies so they wouldn't be too cliched).

While I was helping him, I probably asked him at least five times if he was nervous.  He was as cool as a cucumber.

Then he left for the football game with his signs and the flowers tucked under his arm, and we were all on pins and needles to hear how it turned out.

Finally, he came home.

Lukas, who is 7, bounded downstairs from his bed where he had been fighting sleep, to ask the all-important question: "Did she say yes?"  When Brendan confirmed that yes, his efforts had been successful, Lukas said, "Phew.  Thank goodness!"

My thoughts exactly.  Brendan, you are a brave, brave man.