The Issue of Birth

It is like the answer to all things in the Teenage universe to all the adults questions, to all the things adults may do or may have done or whatever. The Guilt of Origin ~ the big birth question.


"I did not ask to be born?"

Its a take it or leave it way of saying that I ~a parent~ have a life-tine responsibility to be at my teenagers beck and call, and damn it most of the time I am-ish.

Son, Have I told you about a stork and a bush, and that bush was not burning and it was not immaculate.

A mother could retort about pain, hours of labour, about a TENS machine that should have been wired to National Grid for all its capacity for pain relief, laughing gas that hardly raised a contracted smile, needles that paralysed spines and blod pressure with an authorisation to risk a lifetime's paralysis. I am a man, I just had the fun part.

So I may not exactly be on the morale high ground and indeed shakey ground may be more appropriate Mr Richter. I occasonally however.....I have to stand up for my love rights, as a response to a son, it may not quite rank with my rather good part in creating a human life, but at least it was a response. My response was.....good.


But first we must understand the context of this fall from grace in my parenting technique .....somewhere in the sands of time, on a cold dark night. Fortunately I was inside and warm, as the Pryce family live in a modern house with radiators and electric lighting. I may have been reading a cheap book that was heavy on cold dark nights and plagiarism.

Anyway it may have been a toilet break, who knows, but somewhere along the path to the toilet near my son's room, I may have been diverted by odours unknown. This was not exactly a road to Damascus experience, nor even a long and winding footpath to Eurocent lane. I had a foreboding of a father-teenager spat.

On entry into the room, I may have suggested his room need to be tidied, this suggestion in the course of time may have transferred itself into an instruction. He may have looked aggresively at me, as if I had somehow questioned his virilty, questioned his right to a shaver at some point in the near future.

I do not recall mentioning a bum-fluff moustache. But hey, at least its a moustache, son. Also perhaps adoption may have been mentioned as a parental option that could still be considered. Hey who wants a son prepared to think five strands of what can loosely be described as hair is a moustache when the english language has words like fluff and not.

And then it is there, the demanding question that it was my fault, some thirteen plus years ago I did something I may still not regret, but being blamed for it, it is not good. I was there an adult being called upon to defend the rights to start the next generation. So...


'I did not ask to be born?'

"But you did ask for a bass guitar for Christmas?"

It was an adult response that may not be the most enigmatic, it may not cut the clever dick scales of superiority or exactly reaching the exalted heights of Dorothy Parker put-down-ability. It may not have set-up a thawing of father-son relationship in a post-Christmas context, but at least there was a fair to middling chance of near immediate tidying.

There may have been a token delay to show he is still a teenager, but I believe that the bed may be tidied, that clothes would not be a substitute carpet, that a plastic bottle that once contained pop was now not considered a long term decorative ornament and possibly by end of play today may be considered rubbish.

Hooray for greed and money.