Is My Son Turning into Lou Reed??

Sibling rivalry. It can manifest itself in many ways, but typically results in non-understandable mumblings where words have no beginning or end and the pitch is so low, that random dogs respond to him as he, without end, laments his life and curses his sisters. Head down, shoulders hunched, walking 10 metres ahead of me as a physical protest to my callousness in letting his twin sister go on a trip with her guitar class.
Anyone would think the poor boy was deprived - I, on the other hand am obviously living the life of Riley behind his back: Mojitos by the pool, endless hours of Playstation and limitless donuts, laughing raucously with lots of beautiful people, while he, miserable and self-pitying, sits in a darkened room, covered in straw wearing a hair shirt and self-flagellating with the recharger lead from his MP3....
His granma keeps telling him she had her first job when she was a year older than him, but to no avail - he thinks there'll be an opening for him at 'Ben and Jerry's' as a taste tester, so is gearing his academic skill towards achieving this goal... which involves eating marshmallow, nougat and cappuccino at the same time and seriously assessing it's enjoyability...
I wish I could motivate him more, I've already promised him a Ferrarri if he just PASSES school (I'm hoping he'll be so flushed with self-importance that he'll forget I said that...).
Oh well, he tidied his bedroom this morning - that'll keep 'Greenpeace' off our backs for a bit longer... as it does normally have a moderate to high 'disaster rating', two men in dark suits came round and mentioned hiding 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', but my son and heir managed to confound them with his teenage slurring, mumbling and grunting and they left saying something about 'care in the community'.... Must check under his bed.....

Kids - you gotta love 'em

‘No’ is a word I never used much in my youth;
- ‘Fancy another gin Sarah?’ – ‘Don’t mind if I do…’,
- ‘Wanna lock the woodwork teacher in the cupboard? – ‘Sounds like a plan…’ .
So, why oh why, nowadays do I seem to spend my whole life saying it???? Especially to my son and heir who seems to spend most of his life, when not on his Playstation, demonically devising questions to which the answers have to be ‘no’ so he can then strop about being a deprived child in a suffocating and dictatorial environment…
‘Mom, can I use dad’s old watch as a timer for a bomb???’ or ‘Mom….. can I just test that if the hamster eats bicarbonate of soda, he will explode???’ or ‘Mom, can I take the toaster apart to see how it works????’
Sigh… I never wanted to be the kind of parent who says ‘no’ when your offspring have just finished pronouncing the word ‘mo-o-om??’ But what can I do? Children just seem to have this knack of setting parents up to fail – he begins to ask me a question (I know by the intonation of ‘mo-o-om…’ that it’s going to be a question I have to say ‘no’ to) and I have to deny him. Then as he mumbles his hatred for belonging to our family and kicks the fridge at the unjustness of life, I begin to feel rubbish as a mom and even begin to question whether there is some educational value in ’constructing phallic objects out of Lego and uploading them to ‘Facebook’’….