I thought teenage girls were peacocks, but my 17-year-old son struts and flexes even more than his sisters do...

     "Oh, yeah, I am a sexy man."  He grins.  I'm watching TV on my bed.  Our master bedroom has the best mirrors in the house.  One whole wall is mirrored doors, floor to ceiling.  I raise my eyebrows at Thomas.  It is so tempting to shoot him down.  I squelch the desire to say, "You're not sexy, and you're not a man." 
   He has gelled his hair, carefully donned rumpled jeans and a soft t-shirt, put on his "best" fllip-flops, and chosen a necklace.  A necklace, for crying out loud!  I know, they all wear them.  Thank God, he hasn't asked for a tattoo or piercings.  Sam used to be so self-conscious about his eye.  He's had three surgeries.  Now it just looks like a lazy eye.  He tilts his head, opening that eye to match the other, the perfect one.

      I know that I'm not really supposed to say anything, so I lay there in a stupor trying to recover from my day.  He's getting his ego together so he can go out.  I'm just supposed to smile and let the boy reassure himself of his masculine identity.  He has to look good, but not too good....not preppy, not self-conscious....kinda rumpled, like all the displays in the trendy Galleria stores, but he has to smell good. I laugh out loud as he sprays cologne in the air, then runs through the misty cloud.  "You don't want to spray it directly on, or it's too strong," Tom explains.