Recalibration
I’ve been losing my son lately. It’s not like he’s 14 18 and out on the tiles drinking cider and chasing girls far too young old for me him. He’s 9; but a precocious 9. Precocious and provocative. And annoying. Mostly annoying.
His thing at the moment is violence. Another bomb exploding in Gaza on the TV news? “Wow that looks cool, and I wish I could fire those rockets too”. Congolese massacres? My son wants to be there. God help us if the Tamil Tigers post a recruitment form through the front door. “I wish I was that man out of Grand Theft Auto – then I could do what I like”. I know I shouldn’t react. I know I shouldn’t say, “Well, I hope one day you won’t see the real thing, blah blah blah…”. He’s testing the limits, I know it. He loves the way it winds me up, even when I try the “ignore-him-and-he’ll-soon-get-bored” approach.
My son has a rabbit. He loves that rabbit. Unfortunately however, the rabbit died this weekend. We went out for the evening and when we came back it was just lying there, stiff as a board, eyes wide open. At first, my son played it tough, not able to step out of the little character he has created for himself. It was 30 minutes later that it hit him and the tears flowed. And flowed. At 1AM he’s inconsolable: he wants to sleep with us and, frankly, doesn’t know how life can continue without his rabbit.
Two days later, and things have changed around here – I don’t live with Son of Eminem anymore. He wants to play with me again, not see how long it takes to annoy me by flicking over onto MTV and telling me how great rap music is as he strikes a pose, arms across his chest, one leg thrust forward, head backwards nodding slowly and knowingly. Now it’s rather, “Let’s go for a bike ride dad”, “Wanna play football dad?” ,”Can I help you dad”. I’ll take this version please.
I was really sad for my son: he was sad, so I was sad. I was also sad because I quite liked the stupid rabbit as well. But I have to say that I’m secretly glad that the rabbit died, because it turned my son back into a 9 year old again.
Update: I wrote this a week ago, and I can say that the effect, like the rabbit, was short-lived. Looks like we’ll have to buy another pet with a short life expectancy…
