Personality Test

Last night things at dinner got a little wild.  I can't remember what we were talking about, but one of the nice things about having a new temporary son from Russia is that all of the old stories are new again.  Anyway- we were telling tales and laughing (ok- I do remember one topic- it was how people change through time and we were using old Uncle Tim as an example.  Jon and I might have brought up Tim's star turn in the church youth musical when his one and only line was "And Myrrh" and that might have been about 25% of the words he spoke throughout his high school career. He was a quiet guy, which might shock some who have met Tim as an adult....) So we were telling these tales and the boys kept laughing harder and harder and harder.  After dinner was over they were still hyped and at some point Jon picked Eli up by the ankles and held him upside down.  Which would have been fine, but he was wearing kind of loose pants and somehow they slipped right up to his ankles (he was upside down, remember).  So there he was hanging from his ankles in his boxers and I thought to myself in the split second before cracking up, "Which way is this going to go?  Here he is nearly naked not only in front of his family, but Ildar too....Is Eli going to laugh or cry?  Or punch?"  And the good news is the response he decided to go with was to laugh harder than any of the rest of us.  It made me confident about his future.  Other parents might look for different signs to prove to them that their kids are going to be ok, but me, my fears are calmed when I know my boy doesn't take himself too seriously and can have a real hard laugh at his own expense.  Because we sure were laughing and it was nice to be doing it with him, not at him.