We do lots of endurance activities with the children. Most of these involve outdoors activity of some sort. In the case of swimming, the exertion on my part is quite high- I have to drag him to the car, drag him to the changing rooms, have a fight to get him changed and then stop him escaping before the lesson starts.
Last night however we entered a new realm of endurance activity with the boys first school disco. Badged as a family fun evening, there was a disco and then a few token games with some stickers as prizes. There is no other word for it, the event was harrowing.
Of course the school did it’s part, as it usually does. Nobody from the establishment was guarding the entry and exit from the school and given the boys habit of fleeing at speed (and more recently, his friends baby sister toddling for the exit), we were kept on out toes. Although the chap loves dancing at home, at the disco he decided that tearing around like a nutter was the order of the day.
All the other little kids weren’t purple in the face and dripping with sweat but then they weren’t practising for the 4 by 100m relay race. Inevitably at one point the running and dancing got a little vigorous and I had to intervene and stop a punch up. The boy dragged me to the curtained window and shouted, “If you don’t let me play, I’m going to show you the chickens!” and with that, he twitched the curtains, showing the schools chicken coop.
I’ve never been threatened with the threat of viewing poultry before, this parenting lark is full of surprises and new experiences. I must admit to laughing and then the lad disappeared off into the crowd, to hang out with a girl who was twice his age but appeared to know his name. He’s his grandfathers grandchild, that’s for sure, a lady’s man to his very core.