Cameron and Mason
For quite a few years now, I’ve taken two weeks vacation from work. Well, to a large extent, I’ve taken the entire summer off for the past few years; but, I still go in a bit, and do paperwork at home during that time. What I’m talking about now is an entire vacation.
At first, I did that so that I could spend some time with the kids, while they were out of school. That was when I worked most of the summer. But, as my family grew, and as Josh and the others proved perfectly capable of running the store without my interference (err, I mean oversight), I started to spend the entire summer with the kids, and those two weeks (when they were at camp), became my vacation, to spend time by myself, and (though it hasn’t helped much) to recover my sanity.
This year, I did something a little different. I took one week off during the school year. I still had to deal with the kids every evening, but it was nice to be home during the day. I came up with that idea because there was something I wanted to do at the store this year, during the kids second week at camp.
I was contacted by the school superintendent in early Spring. They were going to try a new program for kids just completing sixth grade, and wanted my participation. The idea was to bring some of these kids into local places of business for a week, so they could see what was actually involved in the workplaces. They had a pretty good list, but wanted to know if I would take a group for a week.
Let’s be honest here: I think twelve-year olds are pretty darned close to perfect. I would have accepted anyway, but decided to handle the group myself, which is why I changed my vacation the way I did.
The day came, and I was ready for them, when they showed at 8:45 am. There were nine kids: four girls and five boys. It was a volunteer program, and I hadn’t been able to decide if it was for kids who’d probably end up in minimum wage jobs to see what they’d need to know to get by in those jobs, or for smart kids who were underachievers - rather a scared straight type program. As it turned out, it seemed like a bit of both. The group they sent me was very diverse. Of the girls, two were black, one was Hispanic, and one was white. The boys had one black, two Hispanics, and two whites. One of the black girls was pretty cute, but she turned out to be a huge Manga fan; and, if she’d been 16, I would have been happy to hire her for the mall store. Most of the rest of them were just there. Most of them were familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh!, more from the cartoon or video game, than the card game, but that was about it. None of them were bad workers, but they were nothing special. Well, except - as you may have guessed from the title - two of the boys, Cameron and Mason.
I started by giving the kids all a tour of the store, so they’d know what I meant, when I referred to different things. When that was done, I assigned all of them different jobs. Some of them working with employees, like running the register. Others were doing the type of work that everyone hates, but has to be done, like dusting and straightening the shelves. I even let some of them ‘take inventory’ (which only means confirming the quantity the computer says we should have on hand, and thus is much easier than when I started, and had to do it all by hand). The day passed, and I was able to spend much of it just working in the store, which was enjoyable in itself. Nothing special happened with the kids; but, I’d not expected anything special to happen, so I wasn’t disappointed. That expectation made Tuesday morning a pleasant surprise, though.
I wanted the kids to see what new comic day was like, so I had them work in the warehouse Tuesday, so they’d already be familiar with it when we did the new comic breakdown on Wednesday. It was the same as the day before had been, except that the tour took a bit longer. When we got to the e-store area, it seemed that all the kids had questions. I guess the internet was something to which they could all relate. They were all really impressed that Andrew had gone to a vocational school to learn to do all the computer stuff he does for me (he not only runs the e-store, but also takes care of our LAN). Mr Kerr, the teacher who came to supervise the kids, seemed to be very happy when I pointed out that Andrew continued to expand on that vocational degree, and was about to get his associates in computer science, that my degree had been in business, along with my teaching certificate, and that of my five other store managers or section supervisors, four of them had bachelor’s degrees and the fifth had an associates.
While the other kids were asking a last few questions about our computer set-up, Cameron came over to me. I certainly didn’t mind taking a minute to talk to him. He was pretty cute, but not the best looking boy in the group. His hair was so dark brown it was nearly black, but he had fairly pale skin and blue eyes. His eyes were probably his nicest feature. They weren’t real dark, but they were very warm - almost like they were made of blue velvet. Of course, his nose was a bit long, and you might have thought he could poke holes with the tip of it, but it was only a minor point, and you only really noticed it when he was looking straight at you. It was a nice combination. I enjoyed looking at him. He was about 5'3", so he was probably adolescent, but he didn’t look like a stick, like so many adolescent boys do. He was just cute.
"Mr Wells," he said, "Mace said that you had him standing at a counter and sorting cards yesterday. Could I do something like that this morning?"
"We don’t do anything like that here, Cam." I thought for a minute. "Does it have to be with cards?"
"No, sir. I’d just like something that I could do standing up for a while."
"Oh. Got spanked last night?"
"No," he said, looking slightly flushed. He met my gaze for a moment, but then looked down and away from me. "This morning." The blush darkened, but he looked back up at me.
"Yeah, that’s a pretty good reason to want to stand for a while. What time did you get up, Cameron?"
"About 6:45."
"And you had to be at school at 8:15? That’s pretty fast work."
"I smarted off to my dad at breakfast, and he spanked me right there. I hate that, ‘cause both my brothers were there."
"How old are your bros?"
"15 and 8."
"Haven’t you ever seen them get spanked?"
"Yeah, but Kurt don’t get spanked anymore, and Craig’s just a little kid."
"I guess that’s pretty embarrassing, but don’t you know not to smart off to your dad?"
"Yeah, but I just got mad."
"I can understand that, but..."
Right about then, the rest of the group finished up, so I took them to where they’d be working. We go through probably thousands of comic bag and boards a week, since I give them away with new comics. It means having to make a big batch of them every week, and I’d already planned to have one of the kids do it. It’s not exciting work, but it can easily be done standing, so I started Cameron off there.
"I had these counters put in so you can sit on a stool to work, but you can stand if your back get’s stiff or your rear ends too sore to sit." Cameron blushed, but I don’t think anyone else caught it.
After lunch that day, I showed everyone pictures of my family. I’d made a couple of comments about the size of it, and met with some disbelief. It didn’t take too long, and we really did it at the end of their lunch break. At least their teacher didn’t complain. I had downloaded a careful selection of pictures to a memory card, and popped it into a digital frame, so they could see the whole gang. They seemed pretty impressed, but not as impressed as I was the next morning.
I’d already explained to everyone that Wednesday mornings, we were rather at the mercy of UPS, as to when we really started work. When the kids showed up, I showed them what each of them would be doing. I wanted them to be part of this, so they could see what really occurred; but, I did not want them getting in the way. Because we break down the orders for all the stores at the warehouse, and it’s a pain to run back and forth across town, correcting mistakes (even before gas became so expensive), we always double count the orders. Therefore, I had a number of jobs they could do, and it didn’t matter if they made a mistake, since we double checked it anyway.
We were standing around in the few minutes between getting them ready and the time our delivery driver usually arrives (just after 9am), when Mason came up to me. Now, I said earlier that Cameron was cute, but not the cutest one in the group. That’s because Mason was around. If you’re old enough, you’ll probably know what I mean when I say that Mason looked like Lance Kerwin. (If you’re not old enough, go Google him – I’ll wait). The main resemblance was in he hairstyle; Mace wore his hair very similar to how Lance had, but Mace’s is even longer. Mason’s hair is between collar and shoulder length, but the front is almost as long as the back. He parts it to the side, but it frequently falls into his face, nearly hiding it. It’s pretty appealing, and I had to work not to rough his hair on a frequent basis. That wasn’t his only resemblance to Kerwin, though. When I Googled for a Kerwin picture, to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, I saw that the nose and cheeks were different (Lance rather had chipmunk cheeks, now that I look back, while Mason’s are pretty lean. The nose is just different, but Mason’s is still cute. I think it’s in the forehead, eyes, and chin that they look most alike. The best picture I found of Lance was black and white, so I’m not sure what color his eyes are, but Mason’s are a rather unusual bluish-green color, rather like water when they sun’s hitting it at an odd angle and it nearly looks like it changes back and forth. They were really quite lovely.
Cameron is about 3 months older than his friend, whose birthday is in January, making him not quite twelve-and-a-half; but, Mason is probably a half-foot taller than Cam. I"m not quite 6 foot, and Mason nearly looked me in the eyes. The thing is, he’s pretty close to being a bean pole. I’ll bet Mason didn’t weigh 120, which is at least 15 pounds light for his height. Still, at his young age, I’ll bet he’s going to start filling out pretty quickly.
Mason had a grocery bag with him, and the other kids were standing around, like they knew something I didn’t. Mason said to me, "You really haven’t changed much."
That was an old declaration, since I was sure I would have remembered him, so I avoided obvious question, opting for smart-aleck instead.. "You should have seen me when I was a tadpole."
I heard a snicker, but didn’t see who it was, since Mason quickly grabbed my attention by pulling an old yearbook from the bag. Not just from where I taught, but from the year I coached the soccer team. Mason already had the page marked, and flipped it open to show a full page picture of me - less wrinkled, thinner, and with more hair, but definitely me.
"I’m not admitting anything. Where did you get that?"
"My dad went to school there, and he remembered you."
Looking at a picture of his father, I realized that I remembered him, also. I’d actually had him for gym one year, and math twice. As soon as I saw the picture, I knew who it was. He just didn’t look much like his son, who admitted that he took after his mother (both the blond hair and the height came from her side of the family).
That’s when the truck arrived, so we put the yearbook away, but I later told Mason that he should tell his father to come visit some time. His father did call the next day, and I invited them to the house on Friday.
The rest of the week went pretty well. I had a good time with the kids. It’s fun to see them learning about this stuff. I love my job and I love the store, but sometimes it’s easy to forget what a really great job I have. I was able to show off all my toys and the kids seemed like they really learned something. I even got a couple of them to renew their interest in my type of material. (Actually, one of the reasons that I liked Mason so much was that he was a comic reader. His dad had gotten interested in them when he was a student of mine, and had passed the interest on). Cameron had been into Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! when he was younger, and had shown an interest in Magic and role-playing while at the store.
Mason and his dad, Mark, showed up Friday afternoon. I’d taken off at 5pm. They showed up around 5pm. I showed them around the house and then we went out to the pool. I fixed us iced drinks and we sat down back there. Mark and I were talking, but Mason was obviously distracted. He kept looking at the pool, and it was obvious what he was thinking. So, I asked the obvious.
"Would you like to go swimming, Mace?"
Instead of answering, Mason looked at his father. His dad shook his head. "We’ve got to meet his mom at 7pm, so he can’t get his clothes wet."
"Could I go in my boxers?"
"If you go swimming, we won’t have time to take you home to change, before we meet your mom." Then he looked at me. "Would it be okay for him to go skinny-dipping?"
I didn’t have to think about it. "It’s fine with me. My kids do it sometimes, when they don’t have company."
Mason was looking a bit puzzled. "What’s skinny-dipping?"
I looked at him, but his dad answered. "It’s swimming naked."
Mason blushed; but, after making sure we weren’t joking, he stripped down. At his boxers, he paused, then turned around and slid his boxers off. Like many young boys, he was much shyer about his front than his back. As a result, he gave me a great view of a very nice rear end, even though it could have used a bit of flesh. (But, like I said before, he’d obviously just had a growth spurt and needed to put on weight everyplace.)
It was almost funny. It almost seemed like something I would have done. Mason was walking nude towards the pool, and I was talking to his dad, trying not to stare. As he nearly reached the edge of the pool, his dad got his attention.
"Mason, I don’t think your watch is waterproof."
Mason turned around and walked back to put his watch on top of his clothes. He didn’t try to cover himself, and he didn’t blush, but he did act just a bit embarrassed. His dad was watching him, and so I was free to do the same. He was nicely hung - actually pretty big for a 12-year old. He had absolutely no hair, which was really pretty nice. The biggest thing about him was that his balls really dangled. I loved the package.
By the time Mace got into the pool, it was about 5:45. He swam until about 6:30, while his dad and I talked. It was nice to find out what one of my old students had done with his life. He told me about how I’d gotten him interested in comics, what his favorites were, and what he’d passed on to Mason. We also talked about raising children. He traded some stories, including stories about spanking. He was a bit surprised to hear that I still spanked some of the older boys, but liked my reasoning. While he hadn’t officially stopped spanking Mace, he wasn’t sure about spanking a boy of his physical maturity. The worst problem he had was that Mason always got sulky by the end of a period of being grounded. I told him my theory of that. When I told him about spanking my older teens in a few instances, he said he might try it a bit more often. His real reason for cutting down on the spanking, he blushingly admitted, was that he and Mason are now the same height, and Mace just didn’t fit over his lap anymore. I pointed out that Marcus is about two inches taller than me, and offered several hints on how to deal with that.
Mason isn’t a regular visitor with us, because they don’t live real close, so I don’t know if his dad has actually followed through with that. Then again, from what Mark said, Mason, like Ryan and Caleb, is really a pretty well-behaved boy, and just doesn’t need firm correction that often. Still, when Mark told his son what we’d been discussing, Mason didn’t look like he was too happy with me. Oh well, you can’t please everyone.
It’s been about a month since that week. I invited Mark and his family to our Independence Day barbecue. Mason hit it off with Ryan and the other guys, and he’s visited us a few times since then. I think his visits might be more regular, once they start school, since they’ll all be going to the same place.
Cameron has been a much more regular visitor than Mace. Cameron doesn’t seem to mind riding a few miles on his bike, and comes over a couple of times a week. I’ve met his parents, and they seem very nice. His dad thanked me for having him over so often, and stressed to both of us what would happen if Cam gave me any problems. I don’t think it’ll be hard to get Cam across my knees, except he has been very well-behaved whenever he’s around me.
Cam gets along with Huck, but he and Misha have really hit it off. Misha has been teaching him to play Magic, and he’s really getting into it. As a matter of fact, I think that he might be Ryan’s new best friend. I also invited him to a Rifts game, and I think he might be a regular. We did an overnight that time, and Cam looks really good in his boxers (but I sure miss the old days, when all boys wore briefs). Ryan is going to start running a Rifts campaign of his own, once school starts. They’re going to play every other Friday night, and Cam is one of the players he’s invited, so he’ll be around the house on a regular basis.
I might have done that both to help out the school and for the publicity, but it’s sure paid some nice dividends. I’ve already let them know that we can do it again next year.