7 Reasons

Tag: playing

  • 7 Reasons That I Was Wrong About Children

    7 Reasons That I Was Wrong About Children

    Hello!  Marc here.  I have a confession to make.  I’ve been really wrong for a long time about something really fundamental.  When I was growing up, my stepfather would tell me that it “takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong”.  Usually before admitting he was wrong.  Well I’ve been very, very wrong.  Wrong enough to make me a giant.  Because I used to think that having a child would be among the worst things that could happen to anyone.  But now that I’ve been the owner of a child for the past six months (he turned half last Saturday) I realise that it isn’t.  In fact, having a child is bloody amazing.  Here are seven reasons that I was wrong about children.

    1.  It’s Not Difficult.  I used to imagine that being a parent was hard, but it isn’t.  When you have a child, you’ll soon discover that you’re playing all the time.  It’s amazing fun and it’s not at all difficult to do (in fact, it’s child’s play).  Everything you do in your life with your child is a fun game.  Teaching them to eat; teaching them to walk; introducing them to new colours and textures; changing a nappy, everything – however mundane – is a wondrous and fascinating experience for them, which makes it an intensely rewarding experience for you.  Earlier today, my son and I spent half an hour banging on a window from opposite sides at each other.  Half an hour!  It was great.

    2.  It Doesn’t Age You.  I previously thought that having a child was an experience that must surely prematurely age people as a result of the lack of sleep and the heavy burden of responsibility.  But it turns out that the opposite is true.  Spending most of your life with a creature to whom everything is new and exciting is a liberation.  It’s an opportunity to view anything and everything without the burden of your own experiences and prejudices.  It’s like seeing everything through a new pair of eyes.  If anything, I would have to say that fatherhood has made me feel and act younger.  Impossible as it may seem to anyone that knows me, I believe that having a child has made me more childlike than I was before.

    3.  Having Children Isn’t A Serious Business.  I used to think that having a baby around wouldn’t be much fun, but it is.  And even when babies aren’t being very entertaining, you can still have fun with them.  Earlier today, my wife left our (not yet mobile) son unattended in the living room for thirty seconds, so I snuck in and moved him to the other side of his play-mat.  “He’s moved!” She shrieked as she returned to the room while I dissolved into a fit of the giggles.  Once she realised that this was not the case, she laughed too.  Having a child around just makes our lives more fun.  It’s made us more fun people.

    4.  Having Children Is A Very Social Business.  I used to believe that having a child would hamper my social life:  That a child would have a similar effect on my social life to the one that the iceberg had on the progress of the Titanic.  But I was wrong.  Because we didn’t know many of our neighbours before, but now we know almost all of them.  And their many children.  We share toys, baby accessories and childhood diseases with them and our children go to play-group together.  If anything, our social life has been improved by having a child.  It turns out that he’s not an iceberg, he’s an ice-breaker.

    5.  Having Children Makes You Less Selfish.  I used to believe that having children would make me more selfish.  That I would resent the intrusion that a child would make on my time and would guard it jealously.  But it turns out that the opposite is true.  When I went to bed at 2am last Saturday morning and my son saw me and decided that he wanted to play, I didn’t mind a bit.  We played for two hours and it was great fun.  Then I put him into his cot and he rolled around and barked like a dog for a bit.  My wife and I just lay there listening to him and laughing.  I had to be up at 7am to climb a mountain. Did I mind the unexpected impingement on my time and the weariness the next day?  Not a bit.

    6.  Having A Child Does Not Make You Housebound.  I used to think that having a child would mean that I’d get to go out less.  But the opposite has happened.  I’m out all the time!  Weather permitting, we take our son to the park every day.  I’ve spent more time in parks in the last six months than I had in my entire life before we had a child.  I pretty much live in the park; I’m almost a part-time tramp.  As my son and I were playing on our mat the other day, a woman came up to us and said “It’s so nice to see a father spending time playing with his son.”  I smiled and told her that it was no chore.  And it wasn’t.  I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather have been or anything I’d rather have been doing than playing with my son in the park at that moment.  I’m always out these days.

    7.  Children Do Not Make Everything Messy.  I used to dread the effect that a child would have on the interior of my house.  I thought that all of the gaudily-coloured accessories and accoutrements that are needed for children would clutter up my house and make it a (more) horrid place to be.  But they’ve improved it.  We’ve got owls on the walls and windmills in the garden.  In fact, we’ve got owls everywhere.  But I like owls.  Now I get to buy really fun and interesting things to decorate the house with instead of sobre and tasteful grown-up stuff.  Our house is much nicer now and we’ve got a crocodile on the upstairs landing!  Who wouldn’t want one of those?!

     

  • 7 Reasons That A Red Bucket Is The Most Amazing Thing In The World

    7 Reasons That A Red Bucket Is The Most Amazing Thing In The World

    Hello 7 Reasons readers.  Due to unforeseen circumstances we’re going to publish a guest post on a Thursday, which is something that we’ve never done before.  So here, taking up not very much space on the 7 Reasons sofa at all, but making quite a lot of noise and a bit of a smell that we’re pretending not to notice, is today’s guest poster.  Possibly our youngest ever.

    Hello!  My name’s Byron Sebastian Fearns and I’m a baby.  Now I may not have seen much in my five and three quarter months, but today the most wonderful thing happened and I was compelled to share with you what I discovered; it is the most exciting thing in the whole history of the world ever.  It’s something called a red bucket.  Here are seven reasons that it’s more amazing than anything else, even elephants and balls.

     

    1.  It’s Red!  The first thing I noticed when my mother and father wheeled me through the big building full of shiny stuff and dishcloths and picked up my toy that I now know is called a “bucket” (which rhymes with “fuck it”, a phrase I heard my father say once shortly before mother became very cross) was that it is red.  This means that it’s amazing and not blue or yellow like everything else that people buy for me on the basis that “it’s for a boy” or that “yellow is a neutral colour”.  I don’t like blue (it is a colour that makes my father cry at football matches) and I’m not neutral.  If I liked neutral colours I’d hurl magnolia coloured food at the walls rather than orange coloured food.  I like bright colours!  I like red!

    2.  It Makes A Noise!  It does!  As we perambulated through the big building full of shiny stuff and dishcloths Father turned the bucket upside-down and began banging on the bottom of it.  It made a noise like the noise that the man next door makes all day long in his kitchen or the sound that Father sometimes makes with his head on the desk after he has stared at a white screen for a considerable period of time.  I’m relatively new to the concept of onomatopoeia, but it made a noise that sounded like thump-thump-diddle-diddle-ump and was very loud.  The ladies that live in the big building full of shiny things seemed most impressed.

    3.  It’s Hilarious!  Then we took my bucket to the park where the trees and squirrels live.  We lay down on the grass and, after I had completed a short bout of screaming for absolutely no reason, Father said “Look Byron” and put the bucket over his head.  This was the funniest thing I have ever seen.  Ever!  Father then took it off his head and put it back on his head and I laughed again.  We did this for hours!  Father enjoyed this so much that he started rolling his eyes and staring at his watch with delight.

    4.  It Makes Another Noise!  Just when I felt that I might eventually tire of Father putting the bucket on his head, taking it off again and then putting it back on his head, something amazing happened.  Father coughed and it sounded like the deepest loudest sound ever heard by anyone at all.  This was hilarious.  I laughed for ages.  Then Father made other noises in the bucket too and they were even funnier.  They were so funny that I laughed more than I ever have before; they were so funny that Mother had to edge slowly away from us in case she injured herself with all of the fun; they were so funny that Father suddenly became religious and started asking god when he could go home.  He spoke to god in the bucket!  Oh, how I laughed.

    5.  It Moves!  Then Father stood up and started running round the park with the bucket on his head and pretended to be a monster (which is a creature similar to a dog).  “Rooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!” he said as he ran round a tree; “Roooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!” he said as he ran past a bench; “Rooooooaaaaarrrrrrr!!!!!!!” he said as he ran behind a bush”;  “Aaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhhhh!!!!!!” screamed a tour group from behind the bush; “Roooooaaaaaaarrrrrrr!!!!!” he said as he ran back from the bush;  “OOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!!!” he said as he fell over a bin.  Then he said a word that I’ve never heard before and Mother shouted a lot and we had to go home.

    6.  It’s Red Inside Too!  On the way home Father put the bucket on my head and I thought it was the most awesome and amazing thing that it’s possible for any human to experience, ever.  It turned everything in the world red and when I made a noise it was the biggest noise that anyone has ever made.  It was bigger even than the noise that Father made when I weed on his coat as he was changing my nappy at the National Railway Museum.  It was amazing!  Then Father took the bucket off my head and the next-door-neighbours were there and they seemed concerned.

    7.  I Can Get In It!  After a long – and really boring – conversation with the neighbours about babies and the bucket and stuff we got home and then something happened that was the most incredible, fantastical and phantasmagorical thing of all.  I got into the bucket!

    Look at me! I’m in the bucket.

    Then Father took the bucket away and told me if I ever wanted to see it again I had to write today’s 7 Reasons post as he has something called a “headache”, which he says is a contagious disease that is contracted by proximity to children.  So now I’ve written it I’m going to get the bucket back and play with it all day every day for a week.  Or perhaps a month!  I’m off to play with my bucket now.  Bye-bye.