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.

The sleepover 1

I may have been born of the wrong age, the wrong parents, or perhaps I was on the super nerdy side of the "milk-bottle-top" glass ceiling , back in the day when a milkman could do the rounds of jokes about being a candidate for being called Dad, aswell as an actual milkround. I think I know the muddy side of the fence and I hope its mud. So back in the day sleepover was not yet in the Oxford British ....

But today, kids sleepover and teenagers sleepover.


One is an innocent charge around the house at loudspeaker turned to "11"on the screaming knob, until tiredness morphs them into sleeping beauties.

Teenagers on the otherhand are on a mission to be adults, or what they think adults can do, and possibly this means to the suspicious mind undertaking illicit activities. I know, I have read about it in parenting magazines and saw it in documentaries. I have been forewarned by the older parents that teenagers are not to be trusted. As an adult and caring parent, I must be alert to the danger. I am doing if for their benefit and they will thank me eventually.

Spying is legal in your own home and I am protecting their innocence. Oh yes.

I sniff the air. I hear the noises. I am doorside to the danger of corrupted youth. I am ready to launch against the forces of the dark side. I have heard about the illicit use of drugs and my ears do not inhale. And if there is cold turkeying to be done after the use of illicit baccy, it will be done as part of a high carb diet with buttered bread, as I am at the ready to pratice prevention is better than cure.


Sadly my kindly offer of turkey sandwiches is as unwelcome as my entrance. Apparently I failed to knock, but if I had knocked and showed trust, I would have failed to have caught them ..... listening to music, crap music, but music. Ah ha, is that vodk-water you're drinking. Yes a tasty bit of H20 - learn it for chemistry, my son and friend it turns into steam when heated, "would like a cup of tea and turn the music down". "Think of the rest of the family". I am thinking about you.

Damn in my day and age, at least I would be half cut and sleepovers were called parties where home was a three o'clock walk away.

I believe I may need to engage the repressed memory theory of past dirty deeds not done without photographic evidence to prove it. And repressed it will stay until they are adults.

Oh Lordy

I am an adult. I have a birth certificate to prove it. Honest.

And I have a mirror to tell me I am not a young adult, indeed to be polite an older adult. Too honest by half. The cheeks are furrowed, laughter lines are no longer laughing matter. Jowls is a new word to the Pryce vocabulary canon. It is not only a word, I have some jowls to demonstrate to any person to whom a jowl is an unknown word what a jowl is. I am still an Educator ~ an older Educator ~ an unwanted Educator with jowls.

I appear to have a brain that is capable of lying in face of contrary evidence. As long as I am not facing a mirror, I appear to be a believer in telling tall tales of "strange but true" stories that tell of myself in words such as taut, firm, pert, a good-looking specimen of a boy for his age. I refuse to read the label on trousers. I will sqeeze embarrassingly into things that are politely called tight fitting as in "My word that stitching is good". Darn good.

The optician does discounts on rose tinted spectacles in my neighbourhood. I like discounts. Nagging doubts are for nags and I do not nag, unless there is a red line on the bank account .

But in the back of the brain it knows, the stories are with the pre-fix "Once upon a time..."

Life's little necessities creep by, I have to shave but this is not the face I have in my head, that I appear to have imagined is rugged, that has aged gracefully, matured into adulthood to become iconic. The razor flows not smoothlz but jars and travels in hills and chasms that plough a moving feast of stubble evolving into greyness.

So I am adult and I must face my demons. I am adult called "Lardy" by those who should know better.

Inbetween demons and and this man called Lardy, is the teenager. The face of demon-hood is called Teenager and the name the Teenager calls me is Lardy. He may be right. I moved from Daddy to Lardy in in the space of months, oh Lordy.

Old videos

The family sit to watch old videos of happier times. Babies eating and dribbling, Toddlers kicking the air for want of kicking a ball that is in the general vicinity, Kids opening presents that were promtly presented proudly to the video camera. Happy times.

The teenagers smile and perhaps the teenage hormone levels are controlled, re-adjusted, balanced and maybe old Pa is ok, really.

Visual culture tradition envelopes and embraces oral cultural tradition; I can explain things, remind of things, things of how they were, show we were once a big happy shiny family. We look at faces, faces that have gone to another place, that were younger, single and a half-chinned-ish, faces that have matured into teenagers. The smiles on the TV remind that once we did not need to shout to be understood.

History is explained, the first time elder bro' met younger sis 'and sis' did very little and bro' got a present for not pulling an arm off lil sis, parents got a smile from bro' and a few months later sis' joined in and smiled and we played happy families. School sports, school plays, Christmas, carols sung badly, Easter eggs, visiting friends lost to the sands of time, friends still a phone call away, friends we will visit soon or sooner or later.

Video may have killed the radio star but may have re-focused the Pryce family for a while at least. Dysfunctional Family Extreme is put on pause for a while.

And perhaps I have a feeling the One Big Happy Shiny family is just under the surface, a veneer awaiting to be scratched.

Battle of the Hygiene is won for want of losing

Cleanliness is next to Godliness so they say, except when you are Goth going pagan.

The Battle of the Hygiene between a father and a son is won, and won without me raising a finger, but somhow this time, it feels like a defeat. Why do I not feel victorious in the Teenager/ Shower/ water/ soap equation that equals cleanliness. Fresh air has won for God's sake. But a nagging feeling, an in-glorious feeling wishes I had lost, at least for a while.

The victory was won on a foreign field, where a girl, who he ~ my handsome son ~ may or may not have liked, but probably did and probably won't admit it, especially now. These things I must guess.

She ~ the potential girlfriend ~ had stated the obvious and it was crueller than any de Ville requiring hair dye and crueller than any diatribe of filial hate I may have said, and that I would have regretted later. We, the parents, had known, we had forewarned that soap was a good thing, that shampoo was a nice thing, we had warned politely, with pleading, begging ending with multiple 'pleases'. We had warned impolitely with sarcasm, with shouts, with threats. We had known that a bit of water does help the hormone fuelled pheremones drive to start the next generation, starting with inter gender holding hands only please. He listened not to us, as we were condemned as parents, how could we defend such wrong-doing of being actual parents that care, we were by teenage definition - do-ers of most things wrong.

Sadly rejection by another teenager may have been motivational in shampoo-ing, the end result was the same - a teenager in touch with his daily shower gel. We had success, but I am sad, I am sympathetic at the cost. He now must face her at school, must face her friends, he must face his friends and his enemies. Ammunition to be cruel has already been targetted in teenage rivalry.
He must face them daily until the shame fades. We hope it fades.

My son is alone in knock down land and I am not the wanted helping hand to get him up, I am instead the face of being right.

My handsome shy son has to be strong on his own. Parents are at arm length, a distance that we cannot bear, especially now the air is fresh. Welcome to the real world is not good on occasion, life's rich tapestry misses a stitch, life lessons are necessary and unwelcome and as much as I know it is necessary, to see him forlorn is not so good. Teenager in teen anger at himself, at her, at me, with nowhere to go.

Sod it, sod the rules of puberty, sod the rules of typical teenage MTV world, time to offer the helping hand, the listening ear, the caring eye, time to talk the common ground of rugby - we will throw ball tonight.

Teacher leave those kids....

How we used to chant that song that declared we did not need Education and promptly still did our homework, we were rebels with irony, anarchists as long as we could run away and definitely before we actually did anything.

Today My son needs eduaction, I say so, he needs a little help doing his homework, well to be accurate he needs help to sit down to start his homework. This is a challenge since there are a million and one enemy combat non-heroes to shoot, blow-up, or otherwise destroy.

Quadratic equations are simply not in the same league of entertainment. His Christas present is to be wireless wired to the internet team. Whatever happened to Action man.


To motivate is difficult. To educate is difficult. To talk of the big bad world is difficult, the real world. I may need threats, carrots and a credit card.


My son needs less entertainment and little more education if you please. There is no happy ending yet, life is as such and more of "to be continued" ending. Father don't leave those kids alone.

Unwanted Dead or Alive

I am experienced, I probably look to my teenagers as if I shared wine with Jesus Christ and thought it was a bit watery. I have been there, touched it, seen it, smelt it, read it, re-read it, lost it, found it and put in a safe place that I forgot about, like you do. I have done the whole sensory perception thing and I am a wealth of advice that they ~ my teenagers ~ not want to hear in their young vibrant dynamic world.

~ White lines Don't do it~ may have been a key message rapped by an 80's somebody, it was grand and flashed, before a thousand dancing boys trying to qualify as men ~ as "wear a condom" may have become common parlance as Freddie died a death before a thousand dancing girls that may have had a chance to become girlfriends if I had not been shy.


It is now unwanted advice like cardboard on boxing day and with a feeling that the cardboard even before Christmas was only superficially wanted.

There were times I could rest a beer on a child's head and think there was a purpose to this life after all, now I am in danger of being a balding head resting place to a teenage iPod. When climbing frames were conquered with a fierce intensity and rewarded with smiles. It seems a long ago time, my role is now second going on third place, as a teenage best friend has best advice until he is relegated by the girl with a pretty face or at least pretty to him.

Feeling sorry for myself and where is my free bus pass.

Yeah, time to sit back and re-discover a life outside being child minder, as my teenagers discover a life outside of me. I may need some tips from my teenagers on how to spread my wings, as I have lost the knack of walking alone.