The Child in me....

There is a child in every one of us adults.  You agree? You don’t?  There.  The stubborn child is showing his face.

The lesson? It does not matter if you do or you don’t agree, he, or is it she?  will show its face, sometime….

Today I will deal with this conundrum from the male perspective.  I can’t do it from the female perspective even though I like them very much. J

The Child is the father of the man.  So said William Wordsworth centuries ago in his poem “My heart leaps up”.  It is still a universally accepted maxim, because time and Google have tested it.  No matter how much you deny it …. Like you there.

This truism becomes evident when man behaves like one, craving for affection, dependent, and subservient to  his partner even is his wildest moments (that’s the politically correct word, with a curative petition lying the supreme Court) - asking for chocolates and getting reprimanded, asking for freedom and sent to the corner, asking for a sleep over and being grounded!

Good morning toastmasters, yes, I too have one in me. But I come from a patriarchal family like all of you do and I tell him to shut up almost as often as he rears his head. I know what’s best for him and more importantly, me. Just shut up I say, when he comes up with outrageous ideas – of course in his innocence – He is a child and guileless after all, and he doesn’t take sides, generally.

Good for me - keeps me stable, but bad for him - spoils his creativity.

I've seen life on earth for over half a century, but thanks to the child in me, I like to believe that I don’t seem to have that kind of experienced look on my face! That's the good part. But there's more to come. My child is kind of bubbly and rebellious, and the bubbles surface, quite often, when protocol and political correctness demand otherwise.

The dialogue often goes like this, when I come home from office, after what I think is a particularly successful day for me.

“Come on Dad, I want to celebrate. Let’s go out to a restaurant tonight and have fun”.  “I know, I too want to, but Mum is not feeling well and the kids have exams, I say rather disappointedly (this before my wife even tells me that - By now I am attuned to her thinking on various subjects)

“Oh Come on dude”... he starts again, “you've forgotten how to have fun, you are such an old fogey”.

By now, I know what’s good for me and the kids. I can afford to ignore my own virtual kid. And that’s what I do and when he continues to harangue me, I tell him to shut up. He gets repressed, I get depressed....and the rebellion begins.  I sulk and go quiet - all of a sudden. My wife and kids wonder what’s happened to this guy, who till a moment ago was all smiles and in a good mood – They put it down to mood swings associated with Men when they pause.

Another profound question that tests the depth of my insight is whether the child in me is male or female. Sometimes I believe it's the opposite gender, when unexpectedly, as I am making a speech that narrates an event of compassion or goodness among human beings, something I value very much, tears well up. People find it strange.  A grown man crying! But let me tell you, I am not prone to it…. My kid is.

It has happened before, when I gave a farewell speech to my staff at my last employment. There were tears in my eyes, and I had to leave the room in the middle of the speech. People called me emotional, but it was the child in me that egged me on to become a scientist - generate water from nothing.  It won’t happen today… and if it does, you know who is crying….

Now I know it is sexist to say that tears are associated with feminine gender, but let’s say, they are more prone to them, so all I can say is that the child in me has some, if not all the feminine characteristics.  There is one more.

My kid gets hurt much more easily, especially when I deny her subtle hints, and keeps that hurt inside, and brings it out at inappropriate moments, like when I don’t have the appetite for fight with the wife, my kid will make me say or do things that will provoke just that - There was this occasion when my wife said lets go to Melissa’s house for dinner (she had already promised her, we would, without asking me) – and  I say - you go - give some excuse for me. ! I would not have said that without strong prompting, believe me! My kid told me he / she would find it boring.

But it’s good to have a child in you; they tend to keep you young.

But they are innocent and guileless, but they have to compete with the adult who is full of guile, guilt and delusions of grandeur, and often it’s no competition.  In fact I would have slept off today, just as the kid in me wanted to, had I not been a stern dad, knowledgeable in the ways of the world, and there my friends lies the rub….