Where are your hands right now?

I'm just going to guess, okay I'm going to hope, that your hands aren't in your pants. And I'm going to assume that the reason your hands aren't in your pants is that your mom diligently reminded you (and nagged, and yelled, and scolded) that polite little boys and girls don't walk around with their hands in their pants. And it worked for you, didn't it? Please tell me it worked.

You see, my oldest child has developed the habit of going through life with his hands down his pants. Now don't get ahead of me here because there's nothing vulgar about this. It's just a bad habit that I WILL BREAK.

I'm no stranger to bad habits. I think I started chewing my nails in the womb, and on any given day I will have one beautiful, well-manicured nail just to prove I can grow nails. My small victory. And for a short period of my life I had those fabulous solar nails that looked perfect and couldn't be chewed, but it's just not economically feasible for me to buy nails when God gave me the ability to grow them. So I chew them. All the time.

I also have the fabulous bad habit of munching (on food, not nails) when I need to do a mundane task. Jelly Belly jelly beans are my favorite, and I can go through an average sized bag of them every time I give a TAKS test. While I "actively monitor" students, I eat jelly beans one at a time, and sometimes I count to a certain number in between beans. Or I park the beans at one area of the room and allow myself to have one on every third pass. I usually end up with a little stomach ache, but I keep my sanity during four hours of watching people take tests.

I also need to munch when I'm trying to focus really hard something tedious. I tried to buy lots of almonds last year when I was working on the English department master schedule because I knew I would need to munch. Peanut M&M's work well, too, but I have to eat them in three steps each. You know, take a bite, eat it, eat the peanut from the middle, then eat the other chocolate candy half. Everyone does that right? Somehow it makes me focus - like my chewing jaws are a little motor for my brain. Now that I think about it, munching might give me genius superpowers.

But I never put my hands down my pants. That's just weird.

Tuck's a pretty smart kid, and I think he's decided that pants without pockets can have make-shift pockets if you stick your hands down the waistband. It's been colder lately, so perhaps he's trying to keep his hands warm while wearing pocket-less pants.

Either way, I find myself constantly saying, "Get your hands out of your pants." I thought the problem was confined to home, but yesterday we were Christmas shopping and I caught him with his hands warming just under his waistband. I called him over, grabbed his little face, and whispered, "You do not want me to scream at you across the store to get your hands out of your pants. You will be very embarrassed. It's just not polite." That seemed to fix the problem for the rest of the shopping trip.

But it didn't stop the problem. And it didn't stop me from thinking about him being the weird kid at school who the girls describe with a disapproving scowl: "Tucker always has his hands in his pants. It's sooooo gross." Just ask Wesley Green, the kid in my third grade class who picked his nose. He could tell you. I'm sure he ended up as a social outcast who had to get a job at the North Pole because everyone knew he picked his boogers in the third grade and he couldn't stand the humiliation.

So I persevere. "Get your hands out of your pants," I say, and I mean it. Then five minutes later I say it again. And again. And again.

So this holiday season, thank your mom that you're not reading this post with your hands in your pants. Trust me, it was no easy job to get you here.