Dear Dave

Thursday 23 July 2009

Leaping to conclusions

Dear Dave,

When I'm out and about with the children, I'm used to people assuming that it's my day off from work and I'm giving my wife a break. (Unless it's the weekend, of course, in which case they assume it must be my turn to have custody.) We seem to have moved beyond the stage where a man out on his own with three small children is strange, however. The birthrate is now so low it's apparently peculiar for anyone at all to choose to shepherd more than two kids around without back-up:

Sarah took the children to visit a castle yesterday. Since there was a special offer on, they all signed up for annual memberships. It cost only a little more than the normal entrance charge and they can now all go as many times over the coming year as they wish for free. We're unlikely to visit more than once in the next twelve months, though, so there was no point signing me up too.

The lady at the desk took the forms and for some reason felt it necessary to say, "There are lots of families with only one parent these days."

"Actually," replied Sarah, "my husband's at home getting some peace and quiet."

The woman smiled. "Oh, I thought he might be dead."

"Er... no," said Sarah, then paid the money and backed away slowly...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS You have to wonder what was going through the woman's mind but it maybe wasn't as scary as the thoughts Lewis had when we were explaining the concept of inheritance to him. We told him about how, when one of my elderly relatives died a few years back, we'd been given some money.

His response was, "Why did you get paid for that?"

2 comments:

JenK said...

Ack. What DID you do to get paid for that?
Ahem.
For some reason, in this neck of the woods, every one I know is busy working on their third or fourth baby. I think the economy around here is making every one stay home. And when you're home and can't afford cable... well... you get the idea.

DadsDinner said...

Yeah, when our third child was on the way, no one would believe she was planned. They all assumed we couldn't afford cable...