Tom Sawyer, Whitewashing a Fence

Our back lanai has gotten pretty grody ("to the max"). Between the doves who walk all over the roof and coo coo coo and the trees which drop leaves all over it and the rain, rain, rain which has turned everything to a muddy mess, the lanai has turned green in some places and black in others.

(A lanai is a porch in Hawaii. In our case, it's a slab of concrete surrounded on three sides by the house and fenced across the end.)

We borrowed a pressure washer from some friends and Kerry set to work cleaning the concrete. He'd done about half of it when Ben came home and Kerry handed the task over to him.

I looked outside a little while later to see Ben using the pressure washer to clean up the crud, and one of Ben's buddies squatting on the ground watching the point at which the water was making contact with the concrete. He was literally just a foot away from it, staring intently as if it were incredibly fascinating.

A short while later, I looked out to see four teens busily taking turns with the pressure washer. Kerry came inside and said, "Wow. They not only cleaned the lanai, they cleaned the entire shed and the sidewalk out back."

I took our garbage can out back and asked if they would clean it out as well. One of the boys leaped at me and snatched it out of my hands yelling, "I'll do it!!"

Then they cleaned the street.

Then they peeled all the bark off a stick with it.

Then they took turns shooting each other with it. Actually, one would hold it spraying straight out and the others would run through it, ostensibly to see how much pain they could stand.

Because they're boys, that's why.