You know, it’s funny what makes parents proud. For some, it’s scoring the winning goal in hockey or soccer. For others, it’s great marks in math or in social studies.

For me, one of my proudest moments came today when the Oldest became a wisenheimer.

I guess it’s that transition from child to teenager, that rewiring of his brain, but I nearly broke down in tears when he did a brilliantly funny comeback for us bugging him about his school work.

So, let me set the scene. Tuesday evening. Wind clatters the chimes outside and rattles the windows. The Oldest is on the couch. He’s got an assignment due the next morning and we’ve been on him to get it done. It’s pretty simple really. Tell everyone in the class what you did and how you felt about it.

First problem. His answer to the question, tell everyone what you did, was, err, uhm, I dunno, nothing.

NOTHING!

Not, we watched Bear Gryllis and made fun of the guy who wanted to go home or the epic fail we had trying to load up minecraft on the new computer. Nor was it, we saw the movie Big Hero 6 and he thought he was too sad and too predictable. Nor even was it that he used power tools, built a table and still had all his fingers (Ok, I was kinda proud of him for doing that, too.)

But no, he’d done nothing.

Well, my lad, that’s not good enough. So the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world had him shut off Clash of clans, put down his iphone and think. What about finding that cool case for your iphone? What about playing with your brother and his friend in our rec room (playing a version of the floor is lava game?) What about doing stuff with your dad like seeing Avatar for the first time? Or…?

Well, you get the idea.

He finally confessed that he may have done stuff, but then all he did was list what he’d done. The assignment was really to focus on one thing and tell a good story. So he did. He’s what he told the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world.

“On Friday night mommy went out with the girls and left us with our stepdad so she could party with her friends, and she came home with all these prizes that she’d won and she was drunk cuz mommy loves to drink and it was late, but she came up into our rooms and said, wake up, look at all my presents and we were all like, mommy, it’s late, we want to sleep, but she was all like, you wouldn’t believe how much I drank and everyone gave me presents and you have to see them, so we looked at the presents and then she let us go back to sleep.”

None of it was true, but it was amazingly inventive. The Prettiest-girl-in-the-world responded. “OMG, don’t say that! You never lie, everyone will believe you. Tell them mommy came home from church to prey.”

“To pray for more beer!”

I laughed. The Prettiest-girl-in-the-world laughed. We were so proud. He is an official wise ass.

We may come to regret this.