Sunday 17 February 2013

Ask A Stupid Question

The other day I asked the Girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. Usually the answer to this is;

"A vet."

Sometimes with the caveat;

"A cat vet."

However, she seems to have changed her mind because this time she said;

"A man."

And the Boy served only to compound the issue by saying;

"Like Julia Donaldson?"

Ironically enough a friend of mine recently posted on Twitter that she'd received spam from a doctor that claimed he would help make her a man. That struck me as a rather niche form of clientele to be targeting via spam, but given the Girl's answer, the demand is clearly bigger than I had given credit for.

The moral of these loose ramblings is that asking your kids questions is at best futile;

"What did you do at school today, Boy?"

"Dunno."

"What do you want for dinner?"

*Shrug*

"What's YOUR NAME?"

"Er... Mummy?"

Or fraught with misunderstanding;

"School want you to draw something that goes up and down in a playground. What are you going to draw, Girl?"

"Knickers!"

Clearly a progressive school...

Most often though, you just get an answer that makes you wish you hadn't asked the question in the first place.

"Dad, I need some cream."

"Are you itchy, Girl?"

"Yes. On my noo noo."

Not that I mind, it's all a bit of a cabaret. Especially when you compare it to the Boy dancing naked on the landing, spanking his bare arse and singing "Should I stay or should I go" by the Clash. Or shooting my glasses off my face with a Nerf gun from the other side of the house. Three times in a row.

Monday 11 February 2013

You've Never Had It So Good

Tonight the Boy told me that his life is rubbish. It started like this;

"Sometimes, when you tell me off I don't like you very much."
"Right."

And then his voice went all earnest and wobbly and he said;

"My life is rubbish. And if the start of your life is rubbish, then the rest of your life will be rubbish too and I want to have a life that isn't rubbish."

Bless him, I nearly booked the flight to Disneyland there and then. Never underestimate your children's ability to emotionally blackmail you without actually knowing what emotional blackmail is.

"Why is your life rubbish?"
"You never let me watch telly..."

Let me tell you about how much television the Boy watches. Last week he asked me if I'd ever had an accident at work that wasn't my fault. Earlier on in the day he was trying to convince the Wife to buy Cillit Bang. He's done this enough times to make us wonder if he's on commission. And if it's not adverts, it's quotes from cartoons that, out of context, lead to near-aneurysm-experiences;

"I'm the shaginator!"
"You're freaking what???"
"Like Shaggy from Scooby Doo..."

Anyway, back to tonight.

"You've literally just switched the telly off."
"You never let me play your iPod..."

Except for the other week when he was playing Jetpack Joyride and posting his high scores on my Twitter Feed.

"You were playing my iPod while you were watching telly."
"You never let me stay up late...."
"IT'S HALF AND HOUR PAST YOUR BED TIME!!!"

Bloody liberty! Only a couple of weeks before the Wife had taken the Girl to see some family in Poland, leaving the Boy and I to have some time to ourselves. This largely involved wandering around in our underpants, staying up late, eating chips and watching Return of the Jedi. The Boy had been asking to watch it, and was quite enjoying it until the middle section when he turned to me and said;

"I wish Yoda would hurry up and die, he's taking ages."

It's all about the next explosion for the Boy. Anyway, I let him stay up three hours past his bedtime, and even when I finally tucked him in he was still up half an hour later. Admittedly it was because he was crying because of the monster in the film. When I went up to see him he was so disconsolate he couldn't speak. It took ten minutes to calm him down.

"Why are you crying?"
"Because of the monster."
"It's okay, Luke Skywalker killed it."
"I KNOW! I DIDN'T want it to die, it was REALLY COOL..."


John Shaft, according to the Boy

And with that he dissolved into tears again.

I'm dammed if I let him stay up, dammed if I don't. I think I'd rather take getting told off by him than the weird emotional roller coaster of crying over dead monsters that look like a condom stuffed with walnuts. Or making Lego hearses with transparent coffins containing dismembered Minifigs

Seems unlikely to take off as the new standard in funerals
Which look rather like me...

My hair isn't as neat as this though
That's normal, right? I mean, that's not weird, is it? Its not as weird or worrying as when the Wife asked the Girl;

"Your teacher wants you to draw a picture of something that goes up and down. What do you want to draw?"
"Pants."