Boys will be boys (why?)

Several days ago, Tayson was outside playing with his friend and neighbor, Phoenix. I was enjoying the small slice of time having Tayson's massive amounts of energy being spent outside, and was trying to accomplish some housework. Hearing a knock at the door, I sighed and took my time going to answer it. Usually, if there is a knock at the door when the boys are playing outside, it will be Phoenix, coming to tell me that they found spiders down in the basement window well, or that Tayson is throwing leaves, or the plastic baseball bat is dirty, or some other ridiculous and uninteresting tidbit of information.

When I finally got around to opening the door, there stood my neighbor, Steven Minch. I immediately apologized for taking so long to answer the door. Steven looked even more sorry than I did as he explained to me that the boys had just broken one of his basement windows. #&*@^#$!!!!!! Apparently, the boys had been throwing rocks (that they had probably found in the spider-filled basement window well), and one of them went right through the window.

I went over to check out the damage, listened to Phoenix tell me that Tayson had thrown the rock and Tayson tell me that Phoenix had thrown the rock, apologized profusely to the kind Minches, and made the necessary phone calls to have the window replaced. I sent Phoenix home, dragged Tayson inside, and sat him down to have a little chat about honesty. After our little apparently-effective chat, Tayson confessed that it was indeed he, and not Phoenix, who threw the offending rock.

Tayson then spent a little quality time in time-out, then went to apologize to Phoenix for lying. When Clint got home, I made Tayson confess to his dad what he had done, then Clint gave the all-important lecture on not throwing rocks and took Tayson next door so that Tayson could apologize himself for what he had done. I'm sure that this little teach-Tayson-to-be-responsible exercise was very effective, as Steven and Clint apparently then swapped funny stories of windows they had broken when they were kids.

Why, oh why, must boys be boys?