Love is in the air, but it’s very hard being a young man’s slave
That didn’t take long. Just turned seven and a month away from being nine, the Wee Lad and the Big Lad baldly declared to me during half term last week that they are both in love. Thankfully, with separate people, not the same person . . . though, admittedly, it would make for a more interesting column.
How, I hear you sigh (wearily, as you think for a second you have far better things to be doing than reading this, it being ‘ the Jaws of Christmas’ and all) did this happen? Sure wasn’t it only a fortnight ago that you were reading about the Wee Lad putting his hand in the fire and the Big Lad going for a poo in the Coco Pops bowl?
Well, it seems like a fortnight ago, but it isn’t and as time continues its remorse march to the future, I realised last week, perhaps for the first time, that the Lads are growing up, and not, in the case of the Wee Lad, just out.
A very dear friend, the kind that you don’t see for months who allows you to pick up the conversation exactly where you left off, even though you forgot her birthday and said nothing when the dog died, gave me a shout on Wednesday asking me to meet up. Fortunately, I was not working on Thursday - well I say not working, I mean I was not at my desk and was engaging instead in unpaid employment of the type that means minding childer and the type which makes me 110% sure I’m not cut out for any child-related career.
She was staying with her three kids - girls aged the same as me Lads and a boy that is just three and the cutest wee chap in the world - in her da’s house in Dundalk and after some texting, it was arranged that I would take my crew up to her da’s for tay and buns and a bit of craic.
The Lads have met these ladies before - many times over the years. The last time, earlier this year, they were at mine and the Wee Lad was completely perplexed by his contemporary’s ability to out-fox him, out-wit him and out-bad him. He told me after that encounter he never wanted to see her again. Harsh, but true.
So he was somewhat quiet on the way over to the house, while the Big Lad kept straightening the bit of hair he’d left after a scalping trip to the hairdressers the previous day. After some initial shyness on the part of the girls (the Lads are, depressingly, never shy and bull on in anywhere), my dear friend and myself adjourned to the kitchen where there was talk about the childer (isn’t third class homework a killer?), Santa (she’s it nearly all done, I’m still ‘ browsing’) and household appliances (she’s a Dyson woman), it was unfortunately, time to get on the road.
It came around too soon, not just for me, enjoying the chat with my wonderful friend of more than 25 years, but also, it turned out, for the Lads. For the first time in their lives, they were coy, saying goodbye to the girls. We had only got in the car when I heard the immortal words from the Big Lad: ‘Mum, I think I’m in love’, followed a nanosecond later by the same refrain from the Wee Lad, though how sincere his was I’m not sure.
The Big Lad’s young lady is ‘just wonderful’, while the Wee Lad’s is ‘different from the last time’, which is an improvement. I hummed along to the radio, pretending to take it all in my stride. However, there was little time for sentiment over the following few days as I refereed fight after scrap, shouting my head off about not sorting out who’s turn it was on the computer, picking bread crusts up from behind the TV and feeding them morning, noon and night. And while I may have felt sad on Thursday about the Lads being ‘in love’, I now feel sorry for the ladies who get them. It’s hard being a young man’s slave.