I have a son. He has a name, but I usually just call him “The Boy.”   We don’t have any other kids, and it was just easier to say “the Boy” or “the dog” rather than trying to fit either one with a proper name. The Bear doesn’t use “Boy” as often as I do, and she would often confuse the boy’s name with the dog’s: “Buttons, I mean Shaun…”

I never wanted to look that stupid, so I just went with “dog” and “boy.” I can at least keep that straight.

He’s 26 or 27 now, and since he was 14, my dad has said it’s insulting to just call him “boy”. I don’t give a shit if he’s insulted, he will always be “the Boy” to me.

His contact in my phone just says “Boy.” When he calls or walks in the door I just say “hey Boy.”

As I get older and fatter, I realize I’m just becoming a living copy of Foghorn Leghorn. For you douchebag millennials who don’t know what the hell a Foghorn LegHorn is — get some culture and review all warner brothers cartoons on youTube.

I’m pretty sure last week I started a sentence with “I say, I say boy…” for no fucking reason. Part of it felt natural and good – like this is the time in my life when I should just start sentences with some sort of repetitive nonsense and expect people to listen.

But the little voice inside my head said, wait this could be dementia… where you slip back into your cartoon childhood and start singing “doo dah, doo dah”. I’ve tried not to do it since.

Dementia and insults aside, I’m probably going to continue to call my son, “Boy” till the day I die. He will be factoring this into his decision of what kind of a rest home he will pay for the Bear and I.

The Boy makes an open secret that if we behave, we may be able to get air conditioning in our rest home. If we don’t, on those 100+ degree days in Arizona, we will be sitting under the shade of the one palm tree outside our trailer in Quartzsite.