A boy's eye view of divorce

The man writing at Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing posted a great story about what it was like to be the oldest boy in a divorced family back in the seventies. His lesson about being the Man of the House is worth the read, but be warned: his lesson was harsh, and he writes it well.

I’m thinking about the King of Everything, and how he sometimes takes on that Man of the House persona, especially when there are other men — and sometimes other women! — in our house. As an only child, he doesn’t have to share, and if I could stand it, I’d have his friends over every day to knock some of that habit out of him by sheer force of kid-ness. He is also the kind of kid who is afraid to fail, and I think he has been since the day he was born. Things come easy to him right now in school, and he’s both bored to death and worried about messing up.

Put these two factors together and you have the weird explosion that happened on Thursday when his tutor came over to our house, instead of my parents’. He LOST it over his tutor’s innocent suggestion that they play a game of Operation.

Remember the Thanksgiving turkey recipe meltdown? Just like that. Only he was yelling at his tutor! I finally put the kid in another room to get himself together. Then the poor young man came out and tried to talk to my kid… smart man — he tried the game and agreed. It’s too darn hard. Some of the little things you have to fish around for? It’s impossible.

Somehow, I have to get the kid to back down a little. It’s okay to share our home with friends. It’s okay to totally mess up and have to start all over sometimes. And he doesn’t have to be a man, yet. He’s got all the time in the world.

Anyone want a game of Operation? It’s sitting on our curb.