a simple yarn

I realise that I talk about my daughter frequently. And I realise that I’m the mother of a son as well. No favouritism. She and I have the fibre connection. If I need a ‘wheeling and dealing’ connection, then we call in Son-Alex.

He has this inexplicable ability to go to school with the normal, everyday school life items…pencils, erasers, parers, books and a lunch. What he comes home with will include more than one of the latest school-boy treasures!

I never bought my ‘Salesboy-In-Training’, any Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. But before I knew it, he had a stack of ‘em in his hands, trading and swapping at the speed of light. How’d he get his first one?

‘Where’d you get that?’ I ask, pointing to the stack of cards.
‘I swapped for it,’ is the standard reply.
‘How d’ya get so many?’
‘I traded stuff.’
‘Like what?’ (waiting to hear that he no longer had socks or a jacket!)
‘Oh…I don’t know…nothing much…..sharpened pencils, I guess….’

So my kid is acquiring boyish gold by swapping common everyday school supplies. No wonder we don’t have any writing implements in the house!

I have to say, as objectively as I can, that I don’t see bullying tendencies in Son-Alex to increase his assets. Rather, he’s generally happy-go-lucky-with-a-smile-on-his-face, except when the emotional storm clouds brew, burst with brief showers, and the smile comes out again. And so he wins friends by his overall likeability, all the while adding to his stack of cards.

What’s ironic about what I see is to remember the early days with the boy, and the general countenance of his face:

I had no idea that this somber, serious toddler would burst into pure-energy-in-speech-and-motion as a schoolboy!

Yet I wonder, as most moms do, what he will become as he gets older? Every now and again, the curtain masking the future seems to be pulled aside for a quick peek at what my boy will be when he’s grown, but still I find myself curious to see how his amazing ability with names, his quickness of thought, his impulses and compulsions, his lightning-quick-temper-and-tongue will blend together in future.

And I have to ask myself what will he be wheeling and dealing? I guess I’d better hide the pencils.