Our son, Matthew, phoned yesterday with a strange question. How often did you hit me, he wanted to know.
Turns out he had just returned from the local shopping centre, where he
had witnessed a mother administering some physical chastisement to her
recalcitrant toddler, and Matt was wondering why he had no memories
like that.
After a trawl through the collective memory bank, we concluded that I
had, in fact, hit him once. Mercifully, Matt concurred that this
was richly deserved, and his real concern was why he wasn't hit more
often, because he couldn't remember that he'd been a particularly good
child.
Matt was a long way from being a perfect child, but his sins were
always sins of omission. Homework, for instance, was something
honored more in the breach than the observance. He always did
just enough work to stay out of trouble, but never enough to be good at
anything. Except, of course, his two great passions in life -
surfing and music. He mastered both with a diligent application
of effort that had me tearing my hair out. If he had applied half
that energy to his school work, he'd be running the country by now.
But the real reason he managed to stay out of trouble is that he's a
sunny natured, easy-going person who delights in the company of others,
and refuses to get agitated about anything much.
As a child his extreme sociability was occasionally a nuisance.
Matt was about 7 when Mr S came along, and resolved his never-ending
quest for a real dad, but Matt had already bought home a couple of
candidates before then.
The first candidate was the local school bus driver, who parked his bus
outside our front door, and came in to ask me to go out with him,
because Matthew had said his mum was on her own, and needed a
bloke. The bus driver was homely in the extreme. Lank,
sandy hair, styled in a comb-over, and eyes that never seemed to be
looking in the same direction simultaneously, he was nonetheless
indignant that I didn't jump at the opportunity. Accusing me of
being a snob (he was right) he stomped off, while Matthew and I had a
brisk discussion on the appropriateness of bringing home strangers,
just because you were desperate for a dad.
The second candidate was the local policeman, who had discovered Matt
at the local shop, and asked him where his mother was. Sensing an
opportunity, Matt launched into a tale of woe about being a poor,
fatherless child, whose mother was away at work (entirely neglecting to
mention that there was a baby-sitter at home, waiting for him). I
arrived home that evening to discover the policeman on the doorstep
wanting to have a discussion about child neglect, with Matt grinning
like a loon in the background because he was quite convinced I could
not possibly turn down a policeman.
I must say I did feel like hitting him then, but being unsure of how
developed his friendship with the policeman was, I demurred.
Thank heavens Mr S came along, and married us all, otherwise Matt might have had a few more memories to conjure up.
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Change of Life 
