Parents who only have daughters may not believe this, but there’s just something about boys that is different. I mean, besides the obvious. Boys are simply wired to be a bit more, shall we say, active? (Some would say hyper, loud, obnoxious, and various other terms).

Case in point: My wife’s best friend has two daughters the same ages as my first two boys. Whenever we got together, her reserved and respectable little girls would morph into loud, screaming, running, crazy . . . . . boys. And because our two boys weren’t well behaved and well mannered, and sucked her girls into this type of behavior, well, it must be because WE are bad parents and can’t control our kids.

Another case in point: The Sears clan (all 30 of us, or so it seemed) were all together at church, and the four MALE grandchildren were running around with their heads cut off, and the female grandchild and the youngest Sears daughter (age 11, or is it 12, not sure. Hmmm, shouldn’t I know that?) were sitting on a bench, hands folded in their laps, talking quietly.

I don’t care what anyone else says, boys simply come wired with more . . . something. Take weapons, for instance. Now I never taught Joshua to shoot a gun, or to use a sword, but one day we found him pointing his brothers Star Wars blaster and making shooting sounds. He thought it was cute, and so did I. Cheryl just sighed and said, “I give up trying to keep my kids from playing anything violent.”

A toy gun is nothing, however. Put a toy sword in Joshua’s hand, and you better stand back! We learned very quickly NOT to let him play with the hard plastic swords (after I got a few bruises). The soft foam swords from Legoland are just perfect. As for the shield and helmet, where does he learn this stuff? I never showed him, he just put them on and was ready to go!

Boys. Gotta love ‘em.

Should we go for a little girl, just to see how the other half lives?