Writing for life

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 17/01/2008

That’s it then – Christmas and New Year are firmly behind us and we’re hurtling headlong into what promises to be another roller-coaster year. They’re all a bit like that these days – flying by almost faster than you can count them… or is it just me getting older?

As the dust settles on the post holiday madness I can’t help looking around the house at all the new “clutter” that’s arrived. Between Santa and presents from friends and family the girls got so much “stuff” – one of the twins even commented on Christmas afternoon: “Dad we got way too much, we’ll have to ask Santa for less next year.” The result: despite a concerted pre-Christmas clear-out, is that there’s more junk around than ever before.

And that’s what most of it boils down to – plastic junk. In short order it will either be consigned to the deepest darkest recesses of the toy press, never to see the light of day again, or will be surreptitiously recycled by parents whose need for some semblance of order eventually overrules the pricking of their conscience.

Amidst this Bratz and Barbie fest – in a world still tinged with pink – I look at fathers who have boys, and suddenly everything turns green. In place of the saccharine pink “sweetness” of a girls world, they’re wallowing in a veritable gadget-fest. While they’re “helping” with building blocks, racing games, remote control gizmos, magnetic construction sets and all kinds of cool, testosterone charged gadgetry, I find myself sitting on the rug with the little one, playing with a Barbie whose dog actually passes bowel movements every time you push down its tail, and a cat that can wee in its litter tray!

Envy doesn’t even come close… this is jealousy, pure and simple.

Fundamentally I’m a very happy and contented father, and wouldn’t change things for the world… except perhaps around this time of year. Despite an overly PC society’s relentless attempts to convince us all otherwise, boys and girls are not created equal.

Before I get shot down by the equality lobby here, what I’m saying is that while boys and girls – and men and women for that matter – deserve equal rights, equal amounts of respect, and of course are equally capable, they are not, and never will be, the same. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Christmas stocking.

Every Christmas boys give their dads the perfect excuse to regress into a child-like nirvana of stuff that needs building, that needs batteries to make it work, and things that offer pure, unadulterated fun (and let’s be honest about it, despite our façade of adult propriety, most men never actually progress much beyond that state).

Girls’ play, in contrast, tends to be much more sophisticated. While boys just want to have fun – build stuff, experiment, compete and generally wreak havoc – girls do all of those things, but in the context of multi-tiered role-plays: complex scenarios that involve multiple characters and span hours if not days. Yes it’s great fun, but it’s fun that demands excessive amounts of imagination. Which is fantastic – but occasionally dads just wants to play!