Rough Housing and other Pleasures
Girls just wanna have fun per Cyndi Lauper, but boys know how to have fun. I think it is simply easier to entertain their minds. How else does one explain the size of the adult entertainment industry?
I finally got a response to an email I sent to my oldest son the other day asking how things were going. He happened to mention in the email that he had moved. So much for keeping the parents informed. But the high point of his life was this, “…my friend danny and I went to the ________ lake on saturday and shot up an old dresser with his 9mm and a .22 rifle, then we set it on fire, and that was fun.”
One thing I never thought about when becoming a parent, but one of the very first I learned, was how destructive children can be. Not that it applies only to boys. My first two were girls and I learned it from them. Boys can take it to a new level. This is if you discount Liz’s basic klutziness.
Much of the damage comes from what I recall my parents had called “rough housing”. The term always seemed to come up when my brother and I were having loads of fun and it was associated with the words like, stop, beating, wait until your dad comes home, haul manure etc.
Boys never really do grow out of it. I have sat and watched my children rough housing and shaking the house until we thought it would fall down. Their mother would be telling them to stop and I would half heartedly support her. I should point out in all fairness that it was not unusual for the sisters to be right in the middle of it.
But I was always right there with them in my heart. Inside I could feel what they were feeling and remember the wrestling, poking and rough housing that I had enjoyed with my brother.
Rough housing feels soooooo good!
I think I will take the day off. Take my 22 rifle and some matches and head to the dump.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Those were good times weren’t they? Two pictures come to mind…a hole in the door and a hole in Kevin’s head. Charlie’s rough housing consists of bouncing a basketball on the tile floor. That is soooo loud!
January 25th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Oh yes! Those were the pleasures of a simple life. But my kids can still rough house pretty well when they get together.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Oh the things we did when you guys weren’t at home…
January 26th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Oh do share! What am I going to do? Take away your allowance? Ground you?
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Somehow I feel like I didn’t get enough mischief in before I hit 18 and could be tried as an adult… maybe the fact that I was never tried as a minor had something to do with it. I think we’re all closeted rough-housers once we get older. Man, even my grandfather, I never saw that old man as happy as he was when we built a potato gun and invited him to spot for us. I think it reminded him of when he served in an artillery unit in the cavalry (you know, before the US cavalry was disbanded in 1942, just to give you an idea of when he was in his prime…).
February 16th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Ya we had some good times when you were gone. I think i might have been a bad influence on Eric and Andrew most of the time. I found your shotgun shells in the kitchen cupboard in bountiful and we were making bombs with them ever since(this was both before and after my mission.) Then there is also the random shooting of animals in the backyard for my taxidermy and science experiments!
February 17th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
[...] It seems Tommy has never out grown pyromaniacal tendencies of young malehood. Yesterday he made a belated comment on a post here from several weeks ago that contained an even more belated [...]