A Day in the Decade of Joe Ex-teen

As Confuscious  may say my name is not a confusing anagram.

To confuse or not to confuse, I sometimes explain how it was to my kids  and how it is now, to give a benchmark, much as my parents  monetary system counted in twelves and stuff, and I, thank the good Lord, counted in tens. I try to show the teenagers where they came from and in some way where they should go, without defining how they should get there, but hopefully avoiding my mistakes. Things change, sometimes for good reason,. I explain things, they may see I confuse things. They see things through modern dynamic eyes, and I through grey tinted spectacles.

My kids measure time in days, and I in decades. A 10% of my life is a third of theirs, give or take a short month in my book and a long month in their Kindle.

Like other things, I measure things on a different gauge to their view of standard
I measure hair in shades of grey and they in inches.
I measure growth in a buckle in a belt-hole and they on my eyeline and extent of my neck-ache
I judge armpit hair in degrees of density and they in "Yes or No"
I measure nasal hair on their escape velocity to moustache dashes and they with a torch
They measure fashion in S and M and I measure in a lottery of Xs.
I measure pimples counts in singular and they zits in plural.

These are examples of how things have changed for me over the years

And in the same way I can  look around at a home that resembles a quantum leap in technology and stuff from my teens: phones without cords, televisions that are flat, microwaves that have moved on from a joke about a hand gently quivering, computers are not a major piece of furniture. I remember records that were black, wood that was formica, glasses that were NHS.

And they remember a little of nothing as nappies were changed, schools were visited and children deposited in tears and then retrieved with smiles hopefully, footballs  that were kicked in between acrobatic falls. I remember these days, they kind of don't. They believe my stories of old from photographs and videos. Now they remember each day, a new day, each weekend to do things that I am not to be told. They see a canvas, and I see a canvas in a frame with paint-by-numbers guidance provided by moi, they see no boundaries, they see a blank canvas.

And so it should be.... but when I lie on the sofa amidst my middle age crisises and feel that a cup of tea is not going to calm the staying powers of carrying on, do I feel the need for a happy pill .... I say thrice no, not when there's Cadbury Chocolate bar to eat. When all else, hair, dyes, bellies, belts, hair, rashes, nostrils, snobs, trousers, flares, fails there is chocolate.....aah.
And this explains the metal in my teeth, whilst their teeth are only caged in metal.

And the morale of this tale is, as aging progresses and the Age progresses and as Confuscious may say ~I no Scofu ~ which is not really an angram either, more an unnecessary confusion, so its time to go with the flow and perhaps occasionally steer the boat to calmer waters if the boundaries are a waterfall.

Restricted Comfort Zones

In a world of middling age, my world. A world in that I am more comfortable with "I paid" rather than I-pad, I-pod; and no doubt probably to be followed by I-ped, I-pid and I-pud, if the law of diminishing vowels is anything to do with it.

I still feel young, vibrant, dynamic, as cutting edge as one can get this side of a Sunday Roast knife, but like that roasting knife, the cutting edge is let down by a handle that knows it takes two to tango and it ain't dancing to any sharp jig no more.

I face the mirror where reality dawns, if I turn on the light. Hair loss cannot be hidden  by ruffling and curling to increase surface coverage, any more. Jowls cannot be explained away as a hiding place for a pickle or two, on the point of causing indigestion. Chins are not even looking better in bad lighting. I am facing the face of an older man.

Whilst the youngsters are there, not seeing that this one day, is their destiny. They swagger at times, they shuffle at others, they jump and they slump, they are young. Slouching to a couch, bouncing to a disco.

But thankfully they have homework which I do not, hooray for mathematics, howah for history.  I can take my coffee, in quiet time, my time. I can take my biscuits or two, I have jowls and chins to feed, I can sit in front of the telly and lounge. I am adult not in need of learning no more.

But as if my world in the comfort zone is also not mine, they know, they know I am ripe to be prodded into dynamism. The teenagers own me 24 hours apparently. There is a demand, there is a sigh of teenage helplessness. I am called to assist. I am called to move creaking bones and be brainy, to roll back the algebra years, to re-visit the algorithms, to recognise symbols that may be of Greek origin and are designed to cause me a crisis. I am questioned on kings as if I know history like the back of my hand, "What king did..?" is being roughly stuttered in the older cerebral mind as "What 'kin king did what ...?", and I call this adult thinking. I am called upon to advise on political discourse but my covering up skills are one up on a Pledge to be brainy and one down on the Pleb that I am.

I-pad or not, there is a coffee that may not have my name on it, but it damn well should have my lips on it. So first my lips need to be patient for there are but a few words to say, so I say 'I do not think, therefore I am pointing to Wiki, Go! Wiki!'. Wiki knows all. Back to the Comfort Zone.

A parenting success, methinks

The hard working executive returns home to his slippers and cardigan, a favourite chair, perhaps to take in a warming cocoa in the arms of his caring family.  As the good father I am, I enquire to the daughter 'how was her day?'

"Fine"

I gently enquire 'Nothing interesting happen'd?'

"Nope"

I mildly suggest with an ever so slightly raising of the tone 'Is it a mono-syllabic day or what? Have you taken a vow of silence and failed by a tad?'

"Shut. Up."

I see this as a success in parenting, a100% increase in parent child communication. I should write a book.

It was a cold dark night going Downtown on the Wrong Side of the Tracks

First it was a passing name thown into a mix amongst others. A name not really warranting a "who she?". Then a few more times a name was posted as being part of the group, one of the gang, then she was mentioned in despatches to the parents, she shared the joke, name-checked in the fun. Then the name was written down on a birthday card, then there was "gift", the gift was cuddly. Then there was the "tell", she was no-one when asked. I reverted to type and sarcasm and ill timed jokes. I'm that kind of  Daddy riot style of tear it down, without thinking, as long as its loud and funny. That was some weeks ago....

Tonight I am called upon on a Saturday night to collect a son from a friend's house - a group DVD-er all-evening-er......I am without my poorly person excuse of creaky bones needing a good hot bath to get out of paternal duties of the chauffeur.

So tonight my alcohol intake is zeroed,  a liver is happy, kidneys relax a tad, the sacrifices I make.

Tonight I drive to a strange place downtown, I have SatNav as my true-est friend. She has saved me many times, rescued me when a family has let me down, when I have faced near-death in inner city congestion. Bar for obvious inner body experiences not had, she is up there as marriage material.

"Sat" takes me a stranger router than imagined. Sat knows better. Sat takes me on motorways, bearing me right when things look straighter straight-on. The darkness, insufficient non vandalised lamp-posts and a drizzle was not helpful to my wellbeing and I was beginning to have trust issues with Sat.

I should trust Sat as if she is a Jedi night that guides its Padewan to a destiny that she knows and I can only imagine. But trust is based on not wetting my pants at a traffic light turning a greeny amber at an entrance to a multiple choice exit. Sat is not talking to me. I drive straight on as blurry green is still green, concentration is focused and  I find straight on is not a wall...hoorah....but a gap ... a hole that an outlaw may have seen, but I am not an outlaw and I start to consider Sat's past.

One-way systems were suddenly upon me like a maze. I was walled in by cars that are parked in unwieldly fashions of desperation designed to faze the novice. Smart cars prove they are smarter than the average car by butt-ending out of parked cars, wanting  bigger cars to play dodgems.

I am manouvring  here, bearing right there, avoiding more stationary car accidents than I - a grown man - should be subjected to without anti depressants. I am crossing sleeping policemen that need to be awake, this is so higgledy that I am afraid of the next street's piggledy is going to get me. A mind readies the insurance claim. I am so slow, I am the leader of a pack and caught in the glare of leading the pack because I am slow. The other cars that know where they are going, just like Sat, but not me. The other cars hate me, I am slow car.

Sat announces that I have arrived, after a path...a route that probably could well double as a runic sign. I am suspicious that Sat has a virus based on witchcraft and she should be called Merlina. But we have arrived and after a daring reverse and park that causes the traffic only momentarily to stop and threaten to gently touch their horns, but instead I think they are now clapping.

I am having a "moment" of celebrating my parking skills euphoria to virtual shouts of  "Done it in One Bro".

A boy is picked-up and I set the return path into the SatNav. I push my internal buttons of car discipline - focus, mirror, concentrate, wipers, look, signal, arch a neck and I again trust the Jedi warrior that is Sat. I am a Padewan again.

Sat declares straight on, but there is a choice staring me in the face of a slip road or another road slightly off to the right. I make the call, a driving management call. I make an error that the curved arrow means  bear right now...NOW!, whereas she  ...Sat knows she meant bear right in some distance or roghly translated as NOT NOW.

I am for a moment lost, there is cold white fear of terror of a re-routing SatNav leaving me to decide on my own on where is my home. This is terror to the extreme on a dark cold night.  This is bungee jumping for the middle aged.

But to cut a long story short and  a long road is straight, I am not called upon into rash calls. The Gods are with me. Sat re-routes and I take a new path home.

Gradually the buildings seem familiar at least from the shadows and shop window brightness, then I am back in the familiar, where Sat becomes a background voice and I can relax to a CD beat and talk to the boy.

A confession he says....it can wait...... I am driver, who seeks to live longer than this Saturday night, a confession waits until this junction is crossed and I have avoided the other Satellite navigation-lead drivers, who do not realise that this turn is sharper than "to bear left" would suggest, success ......we are still alive.

A confession is to be made......

He says....he pauses...he says he was not with the boys tearing up through shlock-horror gore movies. He says, he was with her. He was with her that was the name on a birthday gift. He was on a date.

He wanted to avoid my irony, my sarcasm, the glare of Dadarazzi tabloid humour. He wanted to avoid an embarrassing dad, as much as a Guernsey based bank accounts wants to avoid tax, as well as a campaign of naming and shaming.

I consider, I pause thoughtfully and regretfully  I advise him that he must give her up. The relationship is doomed as long as I am his father. He looks at me as if I am mad. I feel the need to explain the dark secret on this cold dark night. I slowly stutteringly let him know the truth that, that was a bloody awful traffic congestion, traffic routing, traffic re-routing and an unnecessary stress-peaking, blood-sugar-cholesterol dipping nightmare outside a B Movie Horror flick for an old fella ...and that this Dad cannot risk another near heart attack because of a teenage romance. He laughs.

The boys are back in town, the boys are home, thanks to Sat and Saturday nights allright for driving.

Like a Family a long, long time ago....

CBS - I am not one for abbreviations when a good old common multi syllabic words will do and Creaky Bone Syndrome fits the bill. I am poorly as poorly as a person can be without visiting A&E, when every move or jerk deserves a round of applause. I am creaking worst than an empty, cold house on Halloween in a B-Movie Horror pic. I am deserving of lurve, more love than a loverheart message can give.

My teenagers do not give lurve, but a commentary that I knew that I am growing old, always was growing older than I care to think, I knew that this happens, that it was going to happen, get used to it appears as ripe a phrase as a Teenager wishes to suggest.

A phone rings, a daughter answers as she knows it is for her. It is. She discusses things.

She shouts at the poorly one - can I, the poorly person, give her a lift to somewhere, where things are going down. I give a look that says I am a poorly person and this look I believe is not too far a call for a teenager to guess I am saying a big fat no.

She gives me a look that used to be a puppy-please look, when toddlers could run around little fingers, until bigger fingers had reached in a wallet and a cuddly toy was king for a day and retired in three.

To cut a long story short her sympathy look has as much going for it as cardboard box of forgotten cuddly toys. She knew it was going to happen that when a toddler ages, body parts grow, cuteness disappears like fairy dust.. She is not a toddler no more, so no spells no.

She is now upping her game, she is a teenager, she is bringing out the Stare.

We are entering a new age of a Galaxy, a long long time ago........ where prequels became episodes and animated cartoons became clones.

In my world, here tonight the role of  Darth Vader transforms into the Daughtinator and I am Puke Pub-Crawler, for historical reasons that make me appear interesting at least in the past tense. We will duel in a Pryce equivalence of laser swords - the eyeballed-powered death-bitch-stare. Our eyes positively hum with antagonism, our pupils radiate with anti-matter that could re-define modern physics. The silence burns.

I am too old for staring, as well as running it appears. I will lose, like an aging Obi Wan that is now known as Ben.

I retreat to a higher plane, the Force is with me, guiding me to the toilet.

A daughter takes a bus.

Naturally Occuring Poetry

It started as good schoolday evening after a hard day at the coal face called racing that rat and coming second and hoping that the drug tests proves top rat may not be reliably consistent in his defence of accidental inhaling of herbal tea extract.

Daughter has done good, well..... bloody brilliant really.

After reading a poem out in class which is in itself embarrassing by definition, then to heap embarrassment on embarrassment. Teacher gobsmackingly, as they sometimes do,  said it was brilliant. If there's one thing being worst than being a teacher's pet, its to be a teacher's pet in poetry. Then miracles of miracles the kids applauded in "gettin' down in the Project" sort of way. Parental pride knew no bounds.

So plaudits all round, except there started the claim of inheritace of the gene.... yes the poet gene...was it a mummy thing ...or  a Daddy thing...eeny meeny miney mo was not settling this, coin tosses were not going to establish a winner, random luck was not in this equation because history knows the Pryce family can rhyme it with the best of  it. Paternal and Maternal bonds knew the bounds

If there was God-like genius in this Pryce family then  the parents were keen to place direct responsibility with a family or families as case may be, his and hers.

In an innocent aside, Pa Pryce forgot his manhood and beer drinking prowess credential, reeling off various schoolboy poems that were rated 8 out of 10, a mistake by Pa Pryce, I knew it as soon as ey-eight passed out of my mouth, as if it had two syllables. In between 8 and 10 is nine,...... and guess what? Ma Pryce laid claim to 9. Oh yeah. Minor squabbling over the source of genius was about to start as if we were....well teenagers.

Ma Pryce Grandmother was as near a Poet laureate without actually being a Poet laureate that any non Poet laureate could be. Oh Yeah. She had apparently won competitions with published magazines.  I had an opinion, not wanted, but given freely, but not really appreciated as a gift to the art of debating. I had seen the pictures and the words "Farmers Gazette" in the magazine title was in my opinion a give away that rhyming 'cow' with 'how' was not a sign of genius, but a lack of milking knowledge.

For my part, I let it be known that Pa Pryce Grandfather suddenly read books without pictures and with  a few rhyming couplets . Accusations were about to fly.  Threats were about to be thrown as if marriage was a javalin competition. A mixture of nouns and verbs, not normally associated with threats, are suddenly made into a threat by intonation of a voice and a willpower to overcome any Y chromosome deficiency, a condemnation of all things Pryce...... "I've met your family" is heard mockingly. Divorce is a likely option.

Now things were moving into larger families circles, Pa Pryce claims of distant relatives being that close to being Booker prize winners, cheated of their rightful place in literati  by a biased judge and resentful ink industry that jointly did not understand the beauty of crayons as the true combination of  art and writing form.

Ma Pryce claims to have  an extended family that suddenly included the non-mentionable black sheep, as if by virtue of a successful poetry recital were now cast in grey. It was, she implied by the medium of the the death-bitch-stare, a family that are such bookworms that early bookbirds probably have eaten them.

Desperation may have crept in as Pa Pryce quoting historical  family trees. Family trees that proved beyond all reasonable scientific credibility that Pa Pryce's family was linked inherently and genetically to poetic-ness, so incredible that it must be true. It was said in family folk-lore and probably just an internet search away was the paternal proof of a link to Beass ap FitzPreyce the Poet. Bayess or whatever his unpronounceable name was, was a Romantic poet heroes of the Early Ages, whose script would adorn scrolls that may now be dead and near a sea, and these scrolls rhymed too...in that they may be red and near a tree. Look, its a naturally occuring poetry.

A daughter surmises, a judge and jury and possibly practising her best parent, the maternal bond is strong,  she is thankful she is genetically a girl since the only likely DNA footprint I have passed on is hairloss to her brother.



I feel a need to admit there may be some poetic licence in the latter paragraphs, bar the last one, above.

Turning back the clocks

So the clocks went back and time stood more than still, but reality is that turning back time is for the fiction writers and the mad scientist types. Regrets are there and there is more than a few of why's and what's amongst the why not's and what if's, so call me the pessimist, but I know that I cannot turn back the clock, erase and re-wind, and soft focus the wrinkles and pick-up a toddler on shoulders.

So a large part of my time is gone, its there to be seen  in the out-sized belly, the greying hair, and not to be seen in the creaking bones and the forgetting the what's it my call it. So it is my time to advise the sharers of part of my DNA that life is for living. Make mistakes, and know they are mistakes, it happens, get it right next time, regret it enough, but not to try again.

Today I have a knowledge to be passed on whilst a daughter is having a rough time at school, for no particular reason than its another Monday not liked or is it Friday in love, or is it the colour of an eye-shadow, or a branded bag that others do not have, or is it a boy without a shine in his eye, or the embarrassment not shared with an older generation. Advice is as wanted as as a poster needs to list the support act. I am to be a bystander at this point in a life. And I stand by wanting the call, like  a sprinter awaiting a gun in danger of false starting.

I am to wait and watch as things go by and mistakes are to be made without my knowing. And regrets, we hope are few.