Little boys!

Last Thursday, I managed to catch a few moments of Life Matters.  A guy was talking about boys and how their fathers can have good relationships with them.  Tony rang me during the program as he heard a bit of it while in the car and wanted me to get the guy’s name, keen to listen to the full interview.  Of course, one is never in a car for long on TI!

This guy was saying, essentially, that dads can have great relationships with their boys if they spend quality time with them. 

I was interested because I have three boys and I need Tony to have good relationships with them.  This means if I need them to do something I know they won’t do if I ask them, I can get Tony to ask them and they’ll do exactly what I wanted them to do in the first place from simple things such as hang out the wet towel and stop teasing your little sister to serious stuff like, stop mucking around and start studying and don't go to Sydney for the screening of your first ever film at the Sydney Film Festival (because it is in the middle of exam week).

What I did hear affirmed that Tony does exactly what this guy was saying, that is, he has quality time with his boys, fishing, hunting, camping, working on the boat, fixing their bows, making arrows, yarning, playing chess, sometimes just sitting at the kitchen table and not yarning.  He’s a great dad, Tony. 

Then this guy said something to the effect that women make the mistake of thinking that men are just little boys in big boys’ bodies.  My ears really pricked up at this.  What a completely preposterous statement!  For millennia, women have founded their relationships with men on the knowledge that men are little boys in big boys’ bodies, whether those men are their husbands, sons, brothers, friends, colleagues etc. That knowledge has enabled relationships with men to work!

When I heard this I coughed and spluttered.  Then I realised I was being unreasonable.

I am open-minded enough to consider any absurd assertion with fresh eyes.

And so I did.  For 33 hours. 

Until moments after I saw this photo. 

He is my firstborn, TK and he was in the emergency room at TI hospital after dislocating his shoulder, for the second time.  He was in a lot of pain, but safe. 

Tony showed me the photo just after he returned from checking on TK and minutes later, I received a panicked text from a friend, L. She’d just seen a photo of TK in hospital and wanted to know if everything was okay.

I asked Tony what was going on.

“Stop worrying,” he said.  “TK put a photo of himself on Instagram.”

While I typed out my reply to L – He dislocated his shoulder.  He damn well Instagrammed it.  He is ok.  I will dislocate the other shoulder when he gets home – I started to say to Tony, sounding nothing at all like a fishwife, "your son is so irresponsible posting a photo up without explanation and what did he think people would think apart from some terrible accident and honestly, he’s carried on like a little boy and what are you going to say to him about this, Tony, you know, you’ve got to pull him into line sometimes, like now would be a good  …

But Tony wasn’t listening.  He was tapping at his phone, probably organising a fishing trip.

Within a minute, I received another text from a friend, P, panicked about seeing a photo on Instagram of TK in hospital.

I turned to Tony and said, sounding nothing at all like a fishwife, “That was P.  She’s just seen the photo of TK.  Can you believe he posted that up?  Again! You need to get down there and take his phone off him and tell him this is just not on, posting photos of himself when it looks like …

“Stop worrying,” said Tony.  “I just Instagrammed it.”

Little boys in big boys’ bodies!  It took me 33 hours to be reminded.