Junior Ganymede
Servants to folly, creation, and the Lord JESUS CHRIST. We endeavor to give satisfaction

Comrades on the Wall

March 19th, 2019 by G.

Some of my kids are into my teens now, and sometimes they surprise me.

They prompt us to read scriptures. They put on conference talks to listen to while cleaning, or while making dinner on Sunday. We’ve never done that. It’s not learned behavior. These kids are making us stronger. They even top off my curmudgeonliness. “Dad, you know how you call everything communist?” “Yep.” You should call it godless communist.” Yeeees.

Modern fatherhood is mad glorious. It’s every last stand ever told. You’re the one-man defender of a tiny little crumbling fort surrounded by a million slavering hordes.

Trouble is, you are not only trying to run around the perimeter constantly to knock off siege ladders and bash infiltrators and, oh, these old stone walls are constantly being bombarded and you have to keep them in at least some repair, but you also have to haul your kids along on all of it so they can learn the basic skills too, because that’s the point. Try fighting an ogre sometime one-handed while you hold your frightened child’s hand with the other. And you must give a patient running commentary on what you are doing in the fight and how, because that is the point. It isn’t optional. It is the point. It’s all the point, it all must be done, you must fight against overwhelming odds and rebuild a castle and teach your kids to do the same all at once.

It doesn’t feel glorious. It feels like the bitter edge of defeat. Then you come around a corner one morning running at full speed and you see your kid out on the wall fiddling with some massive contraption. What’s that ?Dad! A crossbow. I built it. You built that? Your kid is surprised that you are surprised. It seems the most natural thing in the world to them. Dad, of course! You showed me how crossbows work, remember? You didn’t even think they were paying attention, let alone figuring out how to reverse engineer from first principles a much, much larger one. I thought maybe those crossbows we already have are maybe OK for potting gobbos, but I thought we needed something bigger for the real big guys Does it work? And then you look over the wall. There is a nice scattering of orc chiefs, transfixed to the landscape.

Comments (8)
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March 19th, 2019 06:41:43
8 comments

Vader
March 19, 2019

“There is a nice scattering of orc chiefs, transfixed to the landscape.”

That made me laugh out loud.


Bookslinger
March 19, 2019

Your older kids are all girls, too.


G.
March 19, 2019

So I am given to understand.


Rudyard Kipling
March 19, 2019

the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.


Bookslinger
March 19, 2019

G, in most wards there is that cool family that others look up to as an example. And the other parents hold out those children of the cool family as examples for their own, in response to which I have heard those other children verbally rebel, saying “You just want us to be perfect like the _____s!”

You, sir, are that cool family.


G.
March 20, 2019

Cool is a word that has never been and never will be applied to us again.


Bookslinger
March 20, 2019

Sorry. I did not mean it in the worldly way.


G.
March 20, 2019

Oh, I’m not taking offense. My response is more along the lines of ‘I wish.’

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