When boys will be boys. And girls?

Boys are ... well? Just boys.

Show them a muddy puddle and they get into it; a bowl full of food and they ask for more; another boy and they preen and strut before launching themselves at each other; the whiff of a bird and they happily sniff around following her trail all day ... I am of course talking about boy dogs.

Some boys - the two legged sort - while having fewer disgusting habits than their canine friends (Bertie Baggins although handsome and loveable has some truly stomach-churning tastes in 'food' - I only deign to refer to it as food because he eats it. And yes - I am referring to poo), do display a tendency toward remarkable mind-temporarily-unhinged-from-body moments. For example, walking along the top of six foot walls; leaping into pools of water of uncertain depth; jumping out of windows - first-floor windows, okay it was onto an elevated grass bank, but what if he'd missed?; catching thrown grapes in their mouths; playing the hold-your-hand-in-a-candle-flame game where last one out wins (... a burnt hand?); pirouetting on top of post boxes; leapfrogging over street bollards which don't give way when you miss and land on top of them; standing near a cliff edge and falling off the cliff edge. And laughing at distraught female relatives when the cliff turns out to be only a very small cliff and has a step jutting out beneath it; piling up all the loo rolls to make a karate totem pole for Littlest to slice through (actually, this was fun and nothing did get broken); walking on frozen lochs ... I could go on, but without all this risk-taking behaviour that has mothers' hearts leaping into their mouths, we would have no Formula One, no rugby, no downhill skiing, no history of film special effects stunt-men, and no women brave enough to follow men into these dangerous but enormously enjoyable activities.

I think the problem here is that boys see what they want to do and do it and then think about what could have gone wrong. Girls on the other hand see all the things that could go wrong first and as a result don't do it or do it cautiously - which negates the thrill and removes all the fun. Or am I guilty of being a mum? A mum who hopes her son has no aspirations to emulate Felix Baumgardner.

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

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My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

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Walking, wondering and not walking at all

We all walk. I walk every day. I also lie. I don't walk every day, as in I don't take the dogs for a walk every day. Poor boys, in this season of tax returns and desperate seeking of extra work and working to pay the tax bill, they are the losers. Four-legged-friend was looking distinctly skinny in his hind legs, when I brushed his coat while he wolfed down his supper this evening (he tries to eat the brush if I take it near him at any other time, so meal times have become grooming times). Oddly, I lose out on the walking too, but this fails to have the same effect on my 'skinniness'... Anyway, we all walk. We walked on Christmas day - Littlest and I walked at the weekend - Slowly. Time to appreciate the trees. Time to encourage the smelly boys into the freezing water. Time for the sun to go down. Time to walk very, very slowly - Littlest's finger phone was engaged throughout in deep discussion with the zoo warden - da...

Walking The Dog

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