I’m a mother of two boys. My life is filled with boogers, farts, burps and dirt. They pretend to kill things as we walk down the street, blow things up and fight one another. Mothers with girls look upon mothers with boys with disgust. Our parenting skills are considered to be poor because we can’t get them to sit still. While their girls sit daintily, boys explode with noise and disorder. My favourite mother is one who has a girl first and thinks she’s got it all sorted, her parenting skills are developed, she knows what to do. Then she’s handed a boy and suddenly begins to understand, we’re not bad mothers, we simply have boys.
My proudest/worst moment was in a supermarket. I was choosing something, turned around to find my boys having a full out light saber battle with cucumbers. My shame was so immense; I bent down and threatened every possible horrible thing I could imagine. That just shouldn’t happen in Waitrose.
What made me think about writing this post is that tomorrow I’ve booked to take them deep sea fishing. They’ve been nagging for ages and I’ve managed to put them off but now we have my friend’s son staying who is 15 and loves fishing. The three boys all looked excited with anticipation as we cycled near the fishing shop. So I made the call.
5 hours at sea. Fishing.
Today I went to buy Dramamine. I don’t usually get seasick but as a friend of mine pointed out ‘that’s 5 hours of a rocking boat.’ I panicked. Now I’m reading the brochure and there’s a bar onboard. What to do? Dramamine or alcohol? I’ve decided to risk it. If I don’t throw up with the combination on the waves and fish guts, I’m going to treat myself to a glass of wine on the journey home (although it’ll probably be Budweiser and nothing else.)
I read an article this week in the Telegraph Online explaining how wealthy, healthy women have boys. Why didn’t anyone tell me? There I was, counting my gold, eating my 5 a day fruit and vegetables, exercising and out popped two boys. If I’d known poverty and poor health produced girls, I would have run up a huge credit card bill and lived on deep fried Mars Bars. Then I’d be heading to American Girl tomorrow to have lunch with my daughter’s doll and we’d fix her hair afterwards. I expected to have girls. I have a sister, five female cousins and one male cousin. We have girls in our family. That’s what I knew.
I’ve chased combine harvesters around the countryside in England so that the boys could watch the wheat shoot from the combine into the tractor. I’ve dug for bugs in the garden, climbed trees and rescued them from various scrapes.
Tomorrow my boys and I become deep-sea fishermen. I’d better get some granddaughters. They owe me.
{ 5 comments }
You are a better woman than I. I have a terrible suspicion that faced with boys, I would have turned them into prissy monsters. Girls know how to bring you down a notch. Mine were born with an automatic disregard for my neuroses – this has resulted in a much healthier dynamic than you would expect. Deep sea fishing? How about I drop off my two girls, you take the whole lot of them and report back on your findings? No really. What time?!?!
Your first paragraph is a masterpiece of writing. It says EXACTLY what I have often often thought.
And at school, it’s so unfair for boys. All that sitting still, coloring in, writing in neat letters… What self-respecting boy wants to do that?
Having loved having brothers, I was thrilled to have boys, and just a little nervous when my girl arrived. I loved playing trains and pushing toy cars around, and I don’t mind a light saber duel, but the thought of brushing Barbie’s hair for hours on end, or crawling around pretending to be a kitty – those were things that left me very cold. Luckily, daughter is happy to be a tomboy most of the time, and I have developed a cohort of small girl friends who come round and do the Barbie/kitty thing with her.
I also confess that I do secretly find tractors rather interesting.
Love the title of this post, by the way.
It’s so true. What is? EVERYTHING you say. I often ask the sniffy mothers of girls around here if they would like to swap children for the day so they can see what it’s like. Funnily enough, no-one’s taken me up on my offer yet…
Enjoy the fishing!
Oh ho, very funny. I and most of my friends have boys and what you say is clearly true. I have one friend whose first boy was and remains to this day, a complete and utter angelic dream of a child. She has long derided other mothers for the behaviour of their boys and has now got her come-uppance in the form of her second son, a proper, light-sabre fighting, running away, shouting, ignoring, disobedient little monster. We are all highly gratified by this and treasure his every tantrum!!!
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