"See you later" the boy mumbles, as he climbs out of the car. Hmm, yes that's the first time in a few weeks he has not stomped of fiercely when we reached his school and the first morning car trip without mention of the damned X Box. Result? Have I won the War? the Battle even? ? I have taken the infernal box away during the week. "YOU can't tell ME what to do! / The X BOX is MINE! / Its RIDICULOUS, you are RIDICULOUS! / Everyone in my class plays the X Box for MUCH LONGER than me! / I Don't accept it! / And I Will move out!" Such like assertions ricochet through house and car for weeks. "I can AND I will ! / If You could just SEE yourself with that bloody X Box / Everyone? I'm very sure that's not actually true! / My house My rules!/". We are a double act, the boy and I. A fiery chorus. I have the X Box controls concealed in a safe place. I am not for turning. But oh how to make him see?
See the tense snapping person huddled over the X Box, the low grade bullying of his sisters, fiercely resisted, but, as the older one complained, when you have a six foot one male person invading your body space, and issuing vaguely manacing ultimatums, you are disturbed. See my dawning realization that that is where you will find him when you go looking, barely avertiing his gaze from the screen, as he tells you, against a background of gunshots, that he will finish in a MINUTE, that he has only just gone on, .and what is your PROBLEM? I have introduced a schedule of limited X Box use in return for actual and proven sports participation, dog walking, chores, homework etc. He, as you can see, has fought me every inch of the way. I have employed logic. I have employed appeals to his better nature. I have given respectful dialogue a run. Now I am simply adamant, stubbornly holding the line. He does not see. He does not get it. Why would he? Flung onto the lawless traffic as he is, of internet games (grand theft auto,) consuming hormones, and some truly deviant people mingled in with his own raw, teenaged kind. I am not for turning though. The person I have been snatching from the X Box is channelling some thing you would not want in your house.
Later on I watch a shiver of distaste cross the aristocratic features of my daughter, my princess among peasants, as I hand her a bus time timetable. "Because, darling, my taxi service does not run on weekends.... Much". My husband raises an eyebrow, he is not being keen on my killing routines (he hopes to have me living for his entertainment a few years yet). She is a fine and ambitious singer, actor and musician. We have a dizzying round of practices, competitions, rehearsals, etcetera etcetera to get to. She is I think the natural daughter of Amy Chua, and any tiger mother would be proud to own her. Or else ought to have been the only child of a team of parents, eternally poised to bring her to all her magnificent stuff. I am not worthy. Oh well, she threads her magnificent path regardless. And despite her air of having tossed and turned all night long, a pesky pea having pierced her delicate hide through many lumpy mattresses. "And after all darling" I remind her from time to time, "We must play the hand fate has dealt us". Hmmm.
The boss has retreated, her silence marked, into a re- reading of the entire twilight series. The final movie is coming shortly. She has refused to take me, and is going with her friends. Oh well, its an improvement, more or less, on her most recent obsession with One Direction, and most specifically with beautiful Niall Horan. As to that, suffice it to say that she tried to persuade me to take her to Mullingar, so that we could sit parked outside his house, and maybe catch a glimpse, Also I suspect she felt that if he only had a glimpse of her he would be hers, and then, he whisked away by the power of her will and her passion, I might let him live in our house forever and ever.
See the tense snapping person huddled over the X Box, the low grade bullying of his sisters, fiercely resisted, but, as the older one complained, when you have a six foot one male person invading your body space, and issuing vaguely manacing ultimatums, you are disturbed. See my dawning realization that that is where you will find him when you go looking, barely avertiing his gaze from the screen, as he tells you, against a background of gunshots, that he will finish in a MINUTE, that he has only just gone on, .and what is your PROBLEM? I have introduced a schedule of limited X Box use in return for actual and proven sports participation, dog walking, chores, homework etc. He, as you can see, has fought me every inch of the way. I have employed logic. I have employed appeals to his better nature. I have given respectful dialogue a run. Now I am simply adamant, stubbornly holding the line. He does not see. He does not get it. Why would he? Flung onto the lawless traffic as he is, of internet games (grand theft auto,) consuming hormones, and some truly deviant people mingled in with his own raw, teenaged kind. I am not for turning though. The person I have been snatching from the X Box is channelling some thing you would not want in your house.
Later on I watch a shiver of distaste cross the aristocratic features of my daughter, my princess among peasants, as I hand her a bus time timetable. "Because, darling, my taxi service does not run on weekends.... Much". My husband raises an eyebrow, he is not being keen on my killing routines (he hopes to have me living for his entertainment a few years yet). She is a fine and ambitious singer, actor and musician. We have a dizzying round of practices, competitions, rehearsals, etcetera etcetera to get to. She is I think the natural daughter of Amy Chua, and any tiger mother would be proud to own her. Or else ought to have been the only child of a team of parents, eternally poised to bring her to all her magnificent stuff. I am not worthy. Oh well, she threads her magnificent path regardless. And despite her air of having tossed and turned all night long, a pesky pea having pierced her delicate hide through many lumpy mattresses. "And after all darling" I remind her from time to time, "We must play the hand fate has dealt us". Hmmm.
The boss has retreated, her silence marked, into a re- reading of the entire twilight series. The final movie is coming shortly. She has refused to take me, and is going with her friends. Oh well, its an improvement, more or less, on her most recent obsession with One Direction, and most specifically with beautiful Niall Horan. As to that, suffice it to say that she tried to persuade me to take her to Mullingar, so that we could sit parked outside his house, and maybe catch a glimpse, Also I suspect she felt that if he only had a glimpse of her he would be hers, and then, he whisked away by the power of her will and her passion, I might let him live in our house forever and ever.
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