Kidney, Anyone?


We, (my son and I) were finishing up his homework after about an hour of doing them with little or no break, and wait, before you think I’m a task master; you need to know he got his unwinding time when he got home from school. We don’t mention the ‘h’ word until he gets an hour’s break. At that time he can watch cartoons or play games on the computer or whatever he chooses to do, but when it’s homework time ,there’s suppose to be no fooling around. Period!

It’s getting close to 8 o’clock now and he’s feeling the pressure to finish up so he can go watch his thirty minutes sitcom and just relax before bed and we weren’t finished with his social studies as yet. We were working on the differences and similarities between Hinduism and Buddhism….Yeah, my thoughts exactly, when is he ever going to use that in real life? We were plodding through it and I could see he was getting impatient and quite frustrated by the minute! So to be reasonable, I turned the television on (does anyone ‘switch’ the tele on anymore? hmmm, just a thought) just to ease the tension a bit and lighten things up some, but he got so caught up in the show that I angrily and quickly turned it off!!!

Oh my, was he upset!
“Why did you turn it off?” he asked angrily…
“Oh, no reason”, I replied nonchalantly….
“OMGosh, you’re so mean, I know why you did it!!”
“We need to finish this before you watch TV, and you’re not co-operating! I said…
“So what, I don’t have to watch TV, It’s not like I need a kidney!!!” he yelled.

I tried to run a democratic household where even he, has a say, but the decision ultimately rests with the adults. Hence, the outburst, as I told him he can express himself, but not in a rude manner, guess he didn’t get that memo…..

I grew up in Jamaica, (that’s a loaded statement) had I ever had the guts to speak to my father that way, I wouldn’t be alive much less to be writing this, believe me …. Or I would be swallowing a couple of my teeth….. Just saying….
Most of us grew up in the “Silent Decade”, you know, the children should be seen and not heard era….I had a lot to say, just couldn’t say it ‘cos’ you know what would have happened…

Time for a little talk about expressing one’s self in a not-so-rude-manner and just maybe he’ll be around to celebrate his 8th birthday!!

That’s all I’m saying…….Later!