Apparently, country music comes from Hartman, Arkansas. How appropriate.

A twelve year old and his ten year old sidekick got “liquored up,” stole his father’s truck, set off in search of a girl they’d met at the rodeo, jumped a guardrail, and ended up at the bottom of a hill in an Ozark forest in the middle of the night.

From the Modesto Bee:

Clark James, 46, who lives down the road from the crash site, said he answered the boys’ banging at his front door with shotgun in hand about 2:30 a.m.

“I opened the door and the first thing (the 12-year-old) said to me was, ‘I’m drunk and I had a wreck,'” James said. “I looked at him and I thought ‘You’re kind of young to be out drinking. And you sure shouldn’t be driving.’..”

Teresa Belew, executive director of the Arkansas chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the 12-year-old is the youngest person she’s heard of facing a drunken-driving charge in the state.

James bets that both Johnson County boys are grounded for life.

“If not, then they should be,” he said.

How long till they get a movie deal and an interminable Kenny Chesney song?

When you learn that you are having a boy, a sort of resignation sets in about the whole fashion and clothes thing.  I mean, boys have this reputation for beating up their clothes, not caring if they are particularly clean, and basically as long as a few threads are holding it together, they are good to go.

I was also particularly fearful that my son would inherit my husband’s inability to match items of clothing.  Although he has many fine qualities, fashion sense isn’t one of them. Brown belt and black shoes?  What’s the problem?  Gray shirt and gray pants?  How in the world can I keep insisting that he can’t wear it out of the house, because if two things that are the same color don’t match, then the universe has a serious problem.

Anyhoo, my son had been displaying the usual young male indifference to his clothing.  Clean, dirty, matching, unmatching.  It was all the same to him.

But then last week, something happened.  Dare I say it, a breakthrough of sorts.

They were having “graduation” pictures for his preschool, and I had picked up a lined navy blazer for eight bucks, in one size larger than his normal size.  Yes, I know you are jealous about that.  Often when shopping for the Munchkin, I have the Bargain Angel on my shoulder.  For myself, not so much.

My son knew he would be wearing a white button down shirt and brown linen pants, but hadn’t known about the jacket. I showed it to him in the morning as we were getting ready and asked if he would like to wear it.  His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, yes!”

So he got dressed and I put the jacket on him.  He immediately went to the full length mirror in my room and stood in front of it.  And he actually began to preen. 

“Mommy, I look like I am forty years old.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Mommy, I look like the mayor or something.”

“You do.”

He turned to me with a big grin on his face.

“Mommy, I look really good, don’t I?”

Indeed, perhaps there is hope after all, my son.

Surreptitiously, I wiped a tear from my eye.

And if the amount of squealing from random unknown females on the way to class was any indication, I may also want to think about amassing a large number of sticks.