 |
| Wrinkles |
“So did you do that in the olden days?”
The question just pops out while we watch a war movie on TV.
I look at him. “I know I’m old but I’m not THAT old you know.”
He looks at me blankly obviously not understanding a word that I have said and resumes watching TV.
After a while, he pipes up: “Well did you? Before you were a grown up?”
‘Olden days’ I fear is an elastic term in our household it can take in what happened only a few years ago before Bog Boy was born or it could go back to prehistoric times and lighting fires using flints.
And Grown-ups to Bog Boy are an amorphous blob. They are just grown-ups rather than people of differing or even different ages. It dawned on me that he may not be able to work out people’s ages just by looking and I got kinda scared. What if he thought I looked just like MY Mum and that in fact he thought I was as old as her?
I had to ask if he thought Granny was older than Mummy or vice versa.
This is the same Granny who was only complaining suggesting at Christmas that I dye my hair to cover all the grey, not because she thought I would look better but because she felt she was too young to have a grey-headed daughter.
This is the same Granny who for the past thirty years has weighed less than her daughter – though having lost a whole bunch of weight I am now redressing that balance.
So this age issue takes on a certain amount of significance.
I wait with bated breath.
“Well you say you’re 21 and Granny has to be older than you because she’s your Mummy…..”
Oh what a relief!
“…So she must be 29….”
I think that’s a good an answer as any don’t you?
10 comments:
Perfect answer! What a diplomat. Boys are so much kinder than girls. A garden centre we go to has a parrot which has been 41 for even longer than I have. I've given up pointing this out because to my daughters the sign is The Gospel Truth so the parrot is still 41 and (in loud voices) I am so much older (45). I know the parrot is older than me (actually I think it's shuffled off its perch now. Serves it right.)
what a belting answer!
I would get that on a T shirt and wear it daily....
Brilliant lad!
Besides, you're young until you reach 80. Then you're "venerable'! Never forget that!
And why did you do in the "olden days," when you were a kid?
Um, er, what "did" you do. . . .?
Hehe kids can be so funny! Found my first grey hair this week! Big reality check!
Maggie - as long as he continues to be diplomatic!
Jane@northern mum - It was ESP with both mum and gran beaming at him! Think T-Shirts will be on sale for alll mums and grans shortly.....
rob-bear - he was brilliant wasn't he and as for what I did before I was a grown up, well that depends on your definition of grown up and as to why - it's got to be a state secret (a bit like my age is to my youngest!)
Aupair - ahyes the first grey hair; it's a right of passage keep plucking them out and when they get rather too many dye em before your mother gets too upset!
When I tell my kids that there were no computers when we were at school and we did maths with a slide rule, they really do think I was around in the Ice Age.
Oh , yes . There's children , Big Boys and Grown-ups .
This continues till you're twenty-ish ... there being Brats , Cool Contemporaries and the Rest .
It's only after that that you begin to see the fine difference between being 37 and 87 .
Perfect, but beware....... One of Maxi's friends mums told him she was 21 and he was insistent that she was, then Maxi explained that meant his mummy must have been 14 years old when she gave birth and had him in tears!
Expat Mum - My youngest is convinced I know. He thinks I am lying when I say I wasn't born during the World War!
SmitoniusAndSonata - I do love it esp about the Big Boys as mine are in that zone now Big Boys are just awesome!
jen Walshaw - arrgghhhh!!! Point noted...
Post a Comment