For two weeks now, I’ve been a full time step mum.  I mean, I’ve been a step mum for a few years now, but it was limited to weekends, week night visits and holidays.  This somewhat unexpected change has come about because Stepson 2 has moved in for a while.  His brother joins us from uni at the weekend.

So I’m currently taking part in an intensive crash course in teen boys, specifically those in their 15th year at the moment.

Discoveries so far have included:

• How much they need to eat after school and before dinner.
• How packed lunches require a disproportionate amount of cream cheese to ham that cannot be planned for, resulting in emergency runs (him, not me) to the shop down the road for more.
• How they can turn white socks black without apparently even taking their shoes off.
• And the alternating smell of boy (someone once described it to me as ‘badger’, and I think they might have nailed it) and Lynx Africa….

But the really surprising discovery has been that this one likes to chat.  A lot.  From the point that he gets out of the shower in the morning, if you’re there, your ears get filled up until he leaves for school.  And then pretty much all the time from the end of work, through dinner, washing up and up to bed time there is more chatter.  And while a lot seems to be him trying to convince me that Oasis are a great band (never going to agree to that, sorry Stepson 2) and trying to educate me about football (Manchester United vs Arsenal the other night night.  Arsenal were expected to win so a 0-0 score at half time was surprising), I’ve learned some things I actually am interested in:

• ‘Sagging’ is the term used when teenage boys wear their tracksuit bottoms below their butt cheeks.
• Only the minority of boys (at his school) think this is cool.  Those are mostly the ones most likely to fail their GCSEs.
• As a group of boys in school, it is absolutely not the done thing to befriend a group of girls.  Especially if a few in your group can be classed as ‘a bit odd’ (which apparently at least one is, and they are all quite proud of that).  Therefore, even if you quite like a girl there is absolutely no way of talking to her in this lifetime.
• Vinted has amazing bargains and is the best place to cost effectively buy a wardrobe to be proud of.  It is far more preferable to buy clothes from Vinted than full price.  He has now spread his Vinted enthusiasm to Mr R.  Which would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that Mr R has only been looking and purchasing from the running section, but already has enough running stuff to clothe every runner in the 2025 London Marathon.

And finally, – I don’t know why it’s happened and I may never learn – but Stepson 2, who has chosen to keep his distance to varying degrees over the last seven years, has in the last two weeks, started to call me ‘Pog’ occasionally.  And if that’s not some level of acceptance, than I don’t know what is 🥰.