the tales we tell our children

So we're at the dinner table, eating dinner. The whole famn damily.

I think it's important to try and have the traditional "dinner 'round the table" thing for a couple of reasons:

1) I'm hungry, dammit

and

2) The Wife tells me that this "family meal time" is important, and I'm just too damned tired to argue another point and fight a war on a seventeenth concurrent front.

So we're all there, picking around the spaghetti or chicken or leftover whatever.

And as I am savoring my whatever and mentally listing the various ways God has hurled angelic balls of poo at me so far today, I hear Son#3 mumble something about "stupid girls."

"What? What's the problem?"

"Girls. They're stupid and icky."

Son #3 is 10 years old at the time, so he's on the early edge of that long vague ill-defined window when males become fascinated by females.

"You don't think they're maybe a little bit interesting?"

"No. Girls are stupid and icky."

"Well, I remember feeling that way, too, when I was young. But here's the thing -- you're growing and getting older, and soon you're gonna start to re-think this."

The Wife is watching me warily, and chewing more slowly. I smile at her.

"One day you're gonna meet a girl who makes you feel different. Some girl who makes you want to be smart and funny and strong, and who makes your heart beat fast, and whose voice makes you feel good just to hear. Some girl you try to spend time with even when there's nothing to do -- who just makes you feel all warm and safe and good inside whenever she's with you. And you'll one day find that girl who does this so much and so often that you decide you can't go on unless you know she's going to be there to make you feel this way every day for the rest of your life, so you'll tell this girl how much she means to you, and how badly you want her as your wife, and how you want to make a family with her."

And at this point I realize The Wife and the brood are all looking at me kinda weird and unfamiliar like.

"And then it's going to suddenly hit you: you really should have trusted that first instinct back when you were ten years old."

Dinner time is quality family time.
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