My son’s best friend is wild about football. So, my son is now, too. This is an awesome event because my son has had trouble connecting to peers in the past.
So, football. Ok, two women raising a boy and he wants to watch football. My son, who learns through reading — books, websites, whatever — said to me, “E-Mom, we need to fire up the iPod with serious football apps!!” Ok, how did he know there were football apps? So now we have THREE football apps on two iPods but because they are not iPhones we cannot play together. Uh-oh. I am feeling an upgrade on the horizon.
When kids want the next new gadget (or at least the gadget they’ve recently discovered) and are feeling extra deprived (as only spoiled children can feel), they no longer make references to the Stone Age or pre-WWII Europe, like we did or our parents did. My parents would quote their parents, as in, “when we were starving in Europe, we only asked for food and water” to which I remember responding, “gee, sorry, can I get Frye boots anyway?”
No, our kids say things like, “we’re being raised like the Aaaa-mishhhhh!!” As I remember, Kelly McGillis was very hot in that movie with Harrison Ford, “Witness,” about an Amish boy who witnessed a murder in Port Authority or Penn Station. Ok, so I am missing the point of the intended scathing analysis of our child-rearing techniques. Never mind.
It is important to listen to kids because they are experts in being children and being childish. If they are happy all of the time, then you are a push-over, the moral equivalent of a chump, and, ultimately, a bad parent. I hear tell of a magical zone where good parenting meets the right level of whining for proper childhood development. This may be a myth (actually, I know it is because I just made it up). But there are books written about errogenous zones that exist only on runway models and elixirs of youth, so maybe I have found my way out of the daily grind by discovery a new theory. Hmmm.
What does this have to do with fantasy football? Work with me here. My son is into football and I have a fantasy that he and I will both survive his childhood and adolescence as high-functioning individuals in environs more luxurious than Amish. Also, part of my fantasy involves my brother-in-law watching the football games with my son. Here the reason why it is a fantasy: he is an artist and in touch with his animus and anima (I think these are Jungian terms) — that is to say, he is too evolved for football and in touch with his feminine side as well as his masculine side. Bottom line — he is not a chest beater or head-butter. Which makes him wonderful in general but useless at football. Maybe he is a closet alpha male. (Don’t tell SOB — sister of blogger — because she will un-alpha him in a NY minute. She IS tough but gentle and uses her powers for good.)
I am rambling because my mind goes to crazy places on Friday nights as the work week winds downs and cartoons cometh in the morning. I feel a good kind of tired — the kind that comes from playing with my son — tackle football, of course, and “keep away” and monkey-in-the-middle with POB. Then as we wind down to bed time, we have pretend adventures — because my son has an incredible imagination — I am a British tourist to Oregon (who would not set foot in the former colonies) and only goes to place that revolted against the French, Spanish and Dutch and my son is my uncle George. Then I am a Kenyan who travels to Jamaica in hurricane season (because the airfare was cheap). Where does he get this stuff?. Soon to be followed in a slightly altered Fred Flintstone voice as I reprise my “Big Tuna” role in an undersea world where I have a talk show and he is my little ramora whom POB, as Secret Agent Swordfish (don’t ask), saved on her nose as he fell off a whale. I am exhausted to my core.
Now, my son who is my joy is in his jammies and reading an encyclopedia of something. Because that is the way he is. And I love him because he is kooky and loving and kind and imaginative. And I can take no credit — I am genetically irrelevant to him. He is like the most fabulous gift that keeps changing and challenging the recipient. Sometimes, like tonight, I max out from his intensity. But no worries, he will come charging at full volume into my bedroom tomorrow to wake me up. Thank G-d POB is following with hot coffee.
I love my family. I am blessed. I am tired.
