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The delights of being a father to a feisty force of nature continued. At football class this morning Phoebe took exception to a boy in front of her in a queue and it quickly escalated into a shouting match that lasted the rest of the lesson. I think she thought it was her turn to go, but the boy (correctly) thought it was his. She launched into a tirade of babbling and finger pointing and he being a bit older shouted back a bit more coherently, but confused about why he was the victim of this verbal assault. I am used to being told off by her, but it was impressive how quickly these two basic strangers had taken against each other.
And as much as she seemed cross Phoebe wanted to stand by this boy,partly to keep the argument going, but partly because, I think, this was her way of making friends. She takes after me. And this is why I have no friends. The other day at swimming she attempted to make friends with the only other child in the class by holding his hand and brushing his face with her hand. She takes after me. These are also my two settings. And this is why I have no friends.
Later I made my daughter’s dinner, and the first course of this feast was carrot sticks with humous. I was nicking a few for myself and Phoebe started to feed me the carrot sticks herself. And then, like a fairy tale warning of the dangers of stealing and being greedy she carried on feeding me carrot sticks. Even when I said I’d had enough carrot sticks. It was seemingly endless. And as I protested there was a wicked glint in her eye. She looked up at me and I tried to work out where I’d seen that look before. And I realised her eyes were the eyes that I had seen in childhood photos of myself. I was looking into my own eyes as a tiny version of myself persecuted me by giving me more carrots than I had actually wished for. And I don’t blame little me for wanting to attack big me, because I would have wanted to do the same.
She’s full of mischief and glee and indignity and unprovoked anger and you never know quite which one will come out next. But now I have realised this is just a little me with my wife’s mouth (and luckily limbs) it starts to make more sense. We should all be tortured by ourselves years down the line as a punishment for the torture we subjected our own parents to.
If you only like the good bits of AIOTM and don’t want to wade through all the other shit - here’s three of the sketches from last week’s show. Episode 6 will be up on Monday at 6pm (and I suspect that will see the end of AIOTM). Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Ian Ian - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJnEGg01OY0
