Trampolines, making dad friends and the allure of power tools
Kids' birthday party antics, awkward small talk with parents, and musings on honesty and communication.
It was my son’s fifth birthday this week, which immediately gave me reason to suspect we live in some kind of time paradox: I’ve aged at least ten years in the same period.
Kids’ birthday parties at this age are a social minefield: do you have to invite the whole class? Is it a faux pas to hold your child’s party at the same soft play centre everyone went to the week before for a different kid’s birthday? (Yes.) And how do you make conversation with all the strangers you’ve invited to hang out with you for a couple of hours?
Thankfully, years of making desperate chat with tired-looking parents in parks and play areas has steeled me when it comes to small talk with my fellow kid-wranglers. And a clash of birth dates solved the problem of whether we had to invite all the kids in the class. But I still found myself trying to coax my son’s nervous friends onto a trampoline last weekend, urging them to throw dodgeballs at me as they stared uncomprehendingly at their classmate’s weirdly enthusiastic dad.
As the morning progressed, we soon found ourselves in the “party room” where a succession of local teenagers (who are unaccountably in charge of the trampoline park) carried in boxes of sandwiches, yoghurt tubes and high-fructose soft drinks to the yells of a dozen five year olds. I spotted another dad with a coffee and asked him how passable it was. Soon we were chatting about caffeine preferences and brewing methodology, until his daughter leaned over to whisper something.
“Dad… are you trying to make friends with other dads?” she stage-whispered, absolutely skewering him in the process. He sheepishly admitted to her that indeed he was, and the two of us laughed at his daughter’s brilliant perception skills (and sheer precociousness).
Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash
Kids have no filter, of course, but it did make me think about how much easier things would be if the rest of us could just approach life what that degree of disarming honesty, too. In my adult life I spend a lot of time trying to figure out which of the three kinds of conversation I’m having – often it’s the “what’s this really about?” chat, where you’re in a work meeting trying to figure out the subtext that nobody’s saying out loud.
Men in particular are guilty of this: even with my best friends that I’ve known for decades, I still find myself dancing around subjects with vaguely-implied suggestions or requests rather than just saying the thing I want them to do or talk about. Maybe we need our kids to teach us how to recapture this open honesty in how we talk, because not only is it hilarious to suddenly have your implicit intentions made explicit, but it just makes everything easier.
Mini-feels this week
This is not a drill
I’m trying to get a bit more serious about my DIY this year, and have come to accept that the entry-level drill I bought from Argos for £30 back in 2011 is probably in need of replacement. I did my research, found a good deal, and am now the proud owner of an cordless impact driver and combi drill.
Reviewers of the tools complained that they didn’t come with a clip so you can hang them on your toolbelt when working, but I honestly don’t think I’ve got the manliness credentials yet to even wear the toolbelt, let alone hang power tools from it like some kind of screw-toting gunslinger.
But on the other hand… just holding these things in my hand made me feel like I’ve levelled up as a man, however cliche or stereotyped this sounds. Now I just need, er, something to screw. Or drill!