I remember when I was their age. All I wanted to do was play outside with my friends and avoid the ‘yucky’ girls (strange how things change huh?). I hadn’t a care in the world, other than making sure I didn’t miss the latest episode of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ and learning the steps to Mc Hammer’s hit song, ‘Can’t Touch This’. Those, my friends, were the things that kept me up at night. However, the kids these days…Lord help us. One day, just hanging with them, I was given a shock. The young boy, probably not older than ten, looked me in the eye and asked me if I had a girlfriend. Whattt! I didn’t even know that he knew what that word meant! When I replied ‘no’, the daft child started laughing at me. According to this baby Casanova, I was ‘without game’. Can you imagine? A baby accusing me, the oldest bachelor south of the Sahara and north of the Limpopo, of lacking smoothness! I couldn’t really attest to my ‘player status’ without hopelessly corrupting his young mind, so I kept my peace. That’s when the kid dropped the next bombshell. Giving me a look that said ‘you poor dear’, he broke it down for me. “I am a player”, he said, “I’ve got two girlfriends at school”. Whatt! “That’s right, he continued, and its because I know what all girls want”. “Really”? “Yup, all they need is a confident guy telling them what they already know and do you know what that is?” he asked. “That they are pretty and nice”, he concluded. I wish I could tell him that he was extremely mistaken but I couldn’t. For, you see, I believed that his babyish reasoning was spot one! You can’t believe how weird it felt to sit and get a lecture from this young thing. It was like something from a bad dream.When he was through with the ‘lecture’ I finally got a chance to ask him where in the world he’d learnt all that. “On television”! I swear, when I get hitched to some poor woman I’ll ban TV in my home until the kids turn twenty. I mean, the way I see it, things will only get stranger…maybe my own kids will try to improve my love life! You just never know. Contact: madogz2002@yahoo.ca
