I got my nephew a skateboard for
Christmas. That was the easy part. The question of knee and elbow pads was far
more controversial. The debate raged on for weeks. It was between the me that is so protective of
him that I want to knock down other kids at the park if they look at him wrong,
and the me that wants him to be a little tough, and a little rebellious, and knock
those kids down himself.
That’s the me that says, “Scars
are sexy right? They’re cool badges of honor for shit you’ve done, and you get
to wear them right on your skin.”
The other me counters with, “If he
hurts himself he could be so traumatized that he’ll never enjoy the skateboard
or anything else.”
And then I’m all, “I don’t want him
to be hurt unnecessarily, but I don’t want him to be deprived of cool scar
stories. Plus scars give you something fun to talk about after the first time
you sleep with somebody.”
I respond with a shocked, “I hope
you’re talking about his wife on his wedding night.”
Then we laugh because neither
myself, nor I are uptight about sex. Of course there’s a fine line between
protecting a kid and not letting them have any fun. To those parents that make
their kids wear knee pads and helmets to the park to play, you have gone too
far. Your kids are not going to be ok when they grow up. I’m sorry, but they’re
not. And they’re going to hate you.
Not wanting him to grow up hating
me because he’s scar-less, I decided against the pads, but then there was the couch
incident. It is riotously fun to stand on the arm of the couch and flop onto
the cushions. I was alarmed when this game first began, but it’s been going on
for quite a while and he’s gotten really good at not killing himself with the
couch. So my guard was way down when he went off the arm of the couch backwards
and whacked the crap out of himself on both the table and the floor.
It was all very traumatic for both
of us and there were tears, and an icepack, and finally a cookie which brought
the wailing down to a whimper, and then he had to stop crying altogether so he
could demand more cookies. I felt like a terrible watcher and it became obvious
to both of me that he doesn’t need help collecting cool scars. We all have them,
no matter how much our parents and super-cool aunts tried to prevent it. So I
went ahead and got him the damn pads, but not the helmet, because real men can
take a head injury.
Of course, so far nothing has
convinced him to put them on.
P.S. As
of this post, neither of us has actually knocked another kid down.
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