I look forward to the silly things he’ll do

I know this sounds a little silly, and a lot of parents dread the phone calls from the school letting them know their child has run into a pole, jumped off the slippery slide, or fell out of a tree they weren’t supposed to be climbing, but I'm really looking forward to silly things Julian is likely to do as a pre-teen!

 

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had 2 phone calls from the school that went a little something like this, “Hi Nigel/Coleen!  Don’t worry, Julian’s fine, but.. .”  They’ve been greeted with that parental groan we all know so well, and along with the mild annoyance I’ve felt at his silliness, I’ve also been pleased at the same time.  When you’re told that you will outlive your own son, you start to regret the fact that he’ll likely never fall off the monkey bars and break his arm – not that that’s the good part! – and then feel the puffed up self-importance that all kids feel when there’s a rush by friends to sign the cast.  There will be no war stories told over the doctors head while he stitches a leg or hand, no scars to share and brag about with his mates.  These are the injuries that no parents really want for their kids – who wants to see their kids in that much pain? – but it’s something that I always had a mild, somewhat guilty, hope for him to experience.

 

His first misdemeanour was the week they all went back to school, and involved putting his head together with a mate and deciding that having said friend push him down the hill on the oval in his wheelchair would be a break from the boredom of high school!  Let’s just say a clean-up of the wheelchair was in order after that one . . .

 

 

 

Then, just a week ago we got a call to let us know about a magic trick gone awry!  Long story short, it involved glue, a leather neck band and what looked like carpet burn on his neck . . . I’ll leave your imaginations to fill in the rest!

 

We may have been annoyed by his silliness, but boy oh boy, were we pleased he got to have those experiences too!