It’s WAR

War has bro­ken out in our house. It’s not Mod­ern War­fare 2 Call of Duty. 

That’s the problem!

Son (almost 16 years) has been fight­ing with My Eng­lish­man all week­end. They’re like two lions skir­mish­ing for the lead­er­ship of the pride. Grrrrrr! Son isn’t going to win. I know that, My Eng­lish­man knows that, I sus­pect son knows that. It’s all about the blasted PS3 that I bought (mea culpa) for the Christ­mas before last.

Why oh why did I buy the %*^(* thing?

In my defence it seemed like a great idea at the time. It pro­moted fam­ily bond­ing as we all got together to bat­tle it out on Gui­tar Hero (if you play gui­tar irl don’t try Gui­tar Hero it’s bloody frus­trat­ing!), and Lit­tle Big Planet. It was a great tool for whiling about the cold dark first Christ­mas together.

Now of course, Son is on the final count­down towards his GCSE’s. He has 41 school days till his exams. He has course­work that he’s missed the sub­mis­sion dead­line for!

BY EIGHT MONTHS!

Not supris­ingly we have (the parental ‘we’) become extremely anx­ious. As we tell him, repeat­edly, every day — FOR HIM!

We have tried every­thing. Cajol­ing, bribery, hard-line depri­va­tion.… the parental guid­ance magic box of tricks is almost empty. We have insti­gated the very last resort.

We have child-locked the PS3.

We are that mean!

The inten­tion is that we will allow him to get back into it once the course­work is com­pleted and study is done, but there is that glim­mer of tem­pa­tion to just leave it per­ma­nently locked out.

All week­end son has spent has­sling us.

‘If I just fin­ish one piece of course­work. One good piece of course­work could you please turn the PS3 on?’

‘No! I’m work­ing, your Mum’s work­ing. We don’t get rewarded for our work. Some­times I sit at my desk for 9 hours and I don’t get a break’

‘You can’t expect me to sit at my desk for 9 hours!’ Hor­ri­fied look. This kid has not stud­ied the gulags obviously.

‘Mum, he expects me to sit for 9 hours with­out a break’

‘When do I get a break? What’s my reward for doing the coursework?’

That’s when it all goes just a lit­tle bit pear shaped.

My Eng­lish­man who’s new to this, starts to mut­ter about send­ing chil­dren down chim­neys and sell­ing match sticks. I start feel­ing like ‘the worst mother in the world– depriv­ing her child of  food, water and PS3!’ (Which of course is the but­ton he was search­ing for!) Son turns puce and thundery.

‘Look Son, where’s the list of course­work and the deadlines?’

Son reaches into his bag and pulls out five squares of scrunched up paper with spi­der drop­pings on them. My care­ful engi­neer Eng­lish­man looks hor­ri­fied. I avert my eyes.

The hor­ror the hor­ror! Don’t make me look!

One piece of sci­ence course­work is about the Big Bang the­ory. Prov­ing it!!!!! We try to explain that this is not really GCSE level. Even Stephen Hawk­ings didn’t sub­mit it for his course­work (he didn’t did he?). To no avail. For quite some time long lean son stretches out pathet­i­cally across our bed and explains how he did all the work and then lost the book/paper/piece of scrunched up notepa­per that had the ref­er­ence cita­tions on it. He needed to either find that bit of paper or solve the Big Bang the­ory. Either or!

My Eng­lish­man and I patiently lis­tened. We tried not to look at each other. My Eng­lish­man (he who actu­ally under­stands nuclear physics!) care­fully sug­gested that we need to reframe the work. I — the Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture grad­u­ate. I know noth­ing. Like Schultz! — sug­gested we do a time­line of dif­fer­ent theorems.

Do you see the problem?

It took five min­utes after he’d left the room, huff­ing and puff­ing, for me to realise ‘we’ didn’t haven’t to do any­thing! We’ve done our GCSEs and equiv­a­lent. Dammit we’ve done years and years of Uni­ver­sity courses and essays. (Yes, ok I did leave all my essays to the last second…but we’re talk­ing about son.…)

So please, Mr Head­mas­ter, make it stop! I’m count­ing down the days till the war ends. Until the exams are over. Until the happy joy­ous sounds of may­hem and mur­der ring through our lit­tle home again.Until son’s face is shin­ing with that sense of accom­plish­ment that only comes from doing a good day’s work, pass­ing his exams and anni­hi­lat­ing the baddies.

I’m count­ing down until the peace is restored and Mod­ern War­fare Call of Duty 2 begins.

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by Dune­chaser

Me, ever the pacifist.

HackingEth­ics