Rapscallion
10-03-2006, 06:47 PM
This weekend, I was barely able to keep up with the flow of the forums and the occasional flurry of anxiety we usually get, as I was over at a chum's house. It was ... fun. I'm trying to work out for whom for some of it.
The temptation to drive a fair distance to stay with said chum was down to the bait of some social activity and a competitive karting event. I really enjoy karting, even though I'm crap at it. I've got the bulk to stick to the course no matter what, but I don't do much in the way of cunning overtaking for the simple reason that I have the bulk to stick to corners.
So far, so good. The karting was arranged for Monday, but only when I got there was I told it was going to start at 6pm on Monday evening. "Um, I start work at 6am Tuesday," I pointed out, but...
Said chum is a friend of long standing. He was glomped into a relationship, about which he has no regrets, and is now the proud father (as miles of video footage will attest) of a strapping boy - nearly seventeen months. He's alert and doesn't cry much, so he gets the vote in my book.
However...
To suggest that I'm the last holdout from our youths would be a good intimation. I'm the only one still single and free, and there's only two others who are childless (one is under pressure to father offspring, and a theory is that his gf is going to depart unless she gets a bundle of joy, and the other one is trying hard).
This doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that said chum has apparently fallen hook, line, and sinker into maturity. Sure, he'll go out and play with the boys now and again, and sure he'll have to have me point out that "You go do what you want, since I'm off to bed anyway" is code talk for "Just wait until I get a chance for revenge". Well, even this doesn't bother me.
The problem comes in that he seems to want to drag me down with him. I mentioned in passing that my mother had started dropping hints about never being a grandmother, and that was it.
"Oh, you'd see it differently..." was one of the main things. I was dragged around Toys R Us - ostensibly, this was to gain something that would keep the infant amused, but I looked around in dismay. I could see many items that I once would have traded my brother for, yet now they held no appeal. I still suspect they were trying to show me the delight a child has in such a place. Instead, I saw some pool noodles and recounted Hauntedheadnc's famous tale about them.
In order to make some form of recompense for his night of golf with the boys (yes, after-sundown golfing was part of the amusement), chum had to take his infant to an activity centre, and I was dragged along. Nothing there really interested me, though I made an aside comment about some of the young mothers looking as if they got back in shape very quickly.
"J gets chatted up here all the time," said chum, referring to another recent parent of our peer group. Neither of us were troubled in that regard, oddly enough.
Again, I was shown happy children. Again, I brought out my pocket PC and played a mini-game.
"There's a life outside the Internet," chum said at one point. "It's not real in there!"
I ignored this as the lie I knew it to be.
At one point he was talking about what the ladies of the parish thought he ought to do to change. Morbid curiosity overcame good sense and I asked what they thought of me.
"Wierd, and you need to lose the beard."
"Why? So I can get a girlfriend?"
He nodded, apparently too embarrassed to say anything.
From that moment on, I made it a special point to say 'happily single' when the guys were bemoaning the stuff they had to do to keep their ladies happy.
I'm currently tired and achey due to karting and a fairly savage day at work, but that doesn't trouble me. What is getting to me now is the feeling that I'm going to have to hang out with fourteen-year-olds again...
Rapscallion
The temptation to drive a fair distance to stay with said chum was down to the bait of some social activity and a competitive karting event. I really enjoy karting, even though I'm crap at it. I've got the bulk to stick to the course no matter what, but I don't do much in the way of cunning overtaking for the simple reason that I have the bulk to stick to corners.
So far, so good. The karting was arranged for Monday, but only when I got there was I told it was going to start at 6pm on Monday evening. "Um, I start work at 6am Tuesday," I pointed out, but...
Said chum is a friend of long standing. He was glomped into a relationship, about which he has no regrets, and is now the proud father (as miles of video footage will attest) of a strapping boy - nearly seventeen months. He's alert and doesn't cry much, so he gets the vote in my book.
However...
To suggest that I'm the last holdout from our youths would be a good intimation. I'm the only one still single and free, and there's only two others who are childless (one is under pressure to father offspring, and a theory is that his gf is going to depart unless she gets a bundle of joy, and the other one is trying hard).
This doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that said chum has apparently fallen hook, line, and sinker into maturity. Sure, he'll go out and play with the boys now and again, and sure he'll have to have me point out that "You go do what you want, since I'm off to bed anyway" is code talk for "Just wait until I get a chance for revenge". Well, even this doesn't bother me.
The problem comes in that he seems to want to drag me down with him. I mentioned in passing that my mother had started dropping hints about never being a grandmother, and that was it.
"Oh, you'd see it differently..." was one of the main things. I was dragged around Toys R Us - ostensibly, this was to gain something that would keep the infant amused, but I looked around in dismay. I could see many items that I once would have traded my brother for, yet now they held no appeal. I still suspect they were trying to show me the delight a child has in such a place. Instead, I saw some pool noodles and recounted Hauntedheadnc's famous tale about them.
In order to make some form of recompense for his night of golf with the boys (yes, after-sundown golfing was part of the amusement), chum had to take his infant to an activity centre, and I was dragged along. Nothing there really interested me, though I made an aside comment about some of the young mothers looking as if they got back in shape very quickly.
"J gets chatted up here all the time," said chum, referring to another recent parent of our peer group. Neither of us were troubled in that regard, oddly enough.
Again, I was shown happy children. Again, I brought out my pocket PC and played a mini-game.
"There's a life outside the Internet," chum said at one point. "It's not real in there!"
I ignored this as the lie I knew it to be.
At one point he was talking about what the ladies of the parish thought he ought to do to change. Morbid curiosity overcame good sense and I asked what they thought of me.
"Wierd, and you need to lose the beard."
"Why? So I can get a girlfriend?"
He nodded, apparently too embarrassed to say anything.
From that moment on, I made it a special point to say 'happily single' when the guys were bemoaning the stuff they had to do to keep their ladies happy.
I'm currently tired and achey due to karting and a fairly savage day at work, but that doesn't trouble me. What is getting to me now is the feeling that I'm going to have to hang out with fourteen-year-olds again...
Rapscallion