My son has recently joined a Cub group. They sent us an email the other day telling me that this week they'd be going kayaking. My knee jerk reaction was 'The fuck they are...' but then that's my reaction to most things. Once I had calmed down I soon realised that that's why things like Cubs and Scouts exist; to give red blooded young boys the opportunity to do the things their lame metro sexual Dads don’t, like kayaking.
I probably wouldn't think to take my boy kayaking because a) we don't have a kayak which is somewhat essential and b) unfortunately I've become one of those limp wristed Dads who stops to think what might happen to his only child if things were to turn to shit. I haven't gone so far as to buy one of those trampolines with the safety nets around the outsides mind you; I mean what’s the point in those aye? Falling off the trampoline whilst being suplexed by the big bastard from next door is a rite of passage, if the good lord didn't mean for us to fall off trampolines then he wouldn't have made them with four foot high legs.
We had a massive trampoline as kids, my sister and I. It was so it could have quite possibly been Olympic standard size and man did we get some hang time on that sucker. The first incarnation had on it some heavy duty canvas, made from the same stuff Granddads tents were always made of. Heavy duty army issue stuff that whilst somewhat water resistant, actually absorbed the rain like a sponge. It held strong right up till the day it tore during a mid arseplant of mine. Still, even right up till the end it was hard core enough to break my fall so that I only cried like a girl for a little bit after it happened.
We have one out the backyard these days too and I am pleased to report that it has no safety sides and is regularly used for an all in neighbourhood royal rumble. Wrestling doesn't seem to have caught on with my son’s generation quite as much as it did with mine. Maybe it has something to do with that ridiculous rumour that it's all choreographed. We never once choreographed any of the summer slams that used to go down every morning before form time in our third form year. See that's how friendships were really formed in our formulative years, by being tagged in by a guy who had just super slammed some unsuspecting class mate.
Occasionally things got out of hand. Like the time Big Rob slammed equally Big Brent up against the column heater on the back wall of the classroom. Who would've thought that the combined weight of two strapping young 13 year olds would have been enough to rip it off the wall aye? How could they have not considered that when designing prefab classrooms I wonder?! That particular move bought the entire male population of our class a written warning and a school lifetime wrestling ban. Not that it stopped the rivalry. Coops and Brent, often best mates, were often wrestling with each other in a way that only a psychologist who specialises in homoerotic behaviours amongst young men could explain.
It usually started or finished with name calling. Coops was known as the 'Kung Fu Man' on account of his martial arts interests while Brent was the 'Aussie Bumfucker' on account of his being Australian. This moniker was almost always followed by a physical gesture that can be best described as a squatting man inserting an eight foot dildo in his anus, just in case anyone in earshot was unsure as to the meaning of the term 'bumfucker'. Coops was always an expressive young man with his gestures and still is to this very day.
Brent's unfortunate nickname was right up there with Daphne Blackballs. She was an older girl that lived in our 'Hood back in my younger years who was very dark skinned. Being the multicultural lot we were back then and accepting of all colours and creeds we were quick to point out the obvious. She had quite the potty mouth too as I recall, but that might have been down to the fact that every time we saw her we teased her over the colour of the male genitalia she didn't actually have.
But I was amused and quietly chuffed to learn that some things don't change. My son and his mates were calling each other pet names at their cub meet the other night. I couldn't quite work out who Patricia was because there were no girls in the room, until he told me afterwards that that was their nickname for Patrick.
Admittedly there were no Kung Fu Men or Daphne Blackball's, but poor old Zach is called Zach Efron which in this day and age is as good a burn as it gets no matter what the age.
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