The Sons Of My Friend
You might categorize my relationship with my father as “cool.” Not cool as in Fonzie cool. I mean cool as in chilly. Or not warm. Nonexistent, even.
Lots of kids have relationships like that with their parents. It’s part of the natural awkwardness that invades the teen years, destroying the fragile bonds that were sewn before puberty. In my case, my Dad simply wasn’t interested in my sister or myself. We were financial burdens, obligations to be handled like the phone bill or the mortgage.
So you can imagine my surprise when I went over to my old friend Scott’s house tonight and saw firsthand his relationship with his two boys. Scott was always the most open and frank guy among our small group of friends, but I never imagined he would be so good at raising kids until I had the chance to talk with his boys. Or, rather, to watch them interact with each other. The walls that I once had with my father were not apparent between them, replaced instead by honesty and open dialogue.
I would never have wanted a conversation with my Dad about my masturbation habits, but there was Scott talking about it with his kids in obvious terms in front of me, a relative stranger. Scott seemed to be able to share his deepest secrets with his sons, and they seemed willing and eager to share theirs with him. Like Scott, I’m pretty blunt and to-the-point, and seeing their interaction gave me a glimpse of the type of relationship I would have built with my own kids had life offered the chance to me.
Besides that, it also made me feel good about the choices I’ve made in my friends. If one can be judged by the children one produces, then my friends are among the greatest people ever known. They have produced children who are warm, intelligent, thoughtful, inquisitive (an important one!), and funny. My friends have some pretty amazing kids, and it tells me something about those people I’ve chosen to populate my life. Through the children of my friends, I’ve learned that I’m a very lucky guy, indeed.
Nice post, Ray. You know, I try to have open and honest discussions with my kids about sex and life in general, but they get all weirded out about it. It’s like their peer group finds that stuff unacceptable. I think they’re all going to grow up to be uptight Republicans.
@ryk – I think some of it has to do with your kids viewing you as something of a peer. I guarantee they’re talking about that stuff with them. Thanks to the internet, kids today are much more open and frank about porn, masturbation, sex, etc.
I work with some guys who are around 17 years old, and they seem to have no problem talking to me openly about stuff, even personal stuff. Of course, I’m not really very uptight about anything LOL, so that might help. It makes me wish I had kids so I could try to build something like that with a family of my own.
I guess I was really surprised at how relaxed my buddy’s sons were with him. They trust him and realize that he’s not out to hurt them. You never know how this might play out as they get older, of course, but for now they have a the kind of relationship that many fathers would kill to have with their sons.
Very nice post.