Kids Can Be Fun ... In Hindsight

**Note: This is my first "guest blogger" post, and I'm thrilled that the honor is going to Martin Willoughby of From Sand to Glass.  If you're interested in guest blogging here, send me an e-mail :-)  Thank you, Martin, and I hope you all enjoy his stuff as much as I do!  <3 KL*


My kids are a joy, for everyone else.  Their amusing antics have brought many a smile to people, but had me pulling my hair out and sent me prematurely grey.

At the age of four years old, my darling eldest decided that he could take himself off to the toilet whilst we were in church, my wife having already taken our other child out to breastfeed him.  Reluctantly I allowed him, but five minutes later there was a call from the back of the church.  'Dad I can't wipe my bum properly.'  Everyone turned round to see who was calling out and there he stood, trousers round his ankles and trailing a roll of toilet paper behind him.  All eyes then focused on me.

When he was five, I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when I heard a loud bang from the front room as if something had exploded.  I had taken two steps towards the front room, knowing that my darling was in there, when he rushed into the kitchen saying, 'It wasn't me who cut the wire and there was no flame.'  I ran into the front room to find the aerator in the fishtank had stopped working and two fish were floating on the water on their side.

Two years later the whole family was at a church picnic, and as we had the head of the church in Britain there too, everyone had turned up for a change.  On summer days such as this, we had a picnic after the service and when we did so, my little darling would walk over to the duck pond to see his favourite bird, a duck with a red splodge on its bill that looked like congealed blood.  This time he took his little brother with him, stopped at the edge of the pond and looked round as there were no birds there.  They walked around the pond, back to where they started, then marched up to me.  He asked, very loudly, 'where's the bloody duck dad?'  Guess who everyone looked at?

By the time he'd turned fifteen, I had a large bald spot, a receeding hairline and not a trace of my original dark brown colouring anywhere on my head.  We were at McDonalds.  Myself, a friend, her two daughters, all three of my boys and a couple of friends.  After eating, the eldest girl announced that she and every other kid should go outside and have some fun.  When no one wanted to go with her, she went outside anyway and started to knock on the window and encouraged everyone else to go outside and join her.  She's a blonde.  My, now rather large, darling boy pointed at her and said 'Look.  She's so blonde she can't find the door'.  Friends and family laughed.  Elsewhere heads turned and stared....at him.  At that moment I knew I was free.

In the intervening years I've found a great way to silence him and his teenage brothers in public.  One that gives a slightly malevolent pleasure and allows me to make up for the embarrassment of the past.  If they start to get out of line or rude I remind them how they were created...loudly.  Now, the mere threat of mentioning that they started their lives being squirted out of my penis is enough to get them to behave.

Kids can be fun, in hindsight.

p.s.  I have many more true stories of my child, and other children, but one of the above is false.  Can you guess which one?