Male Bonding

Excitement is building. I was woken at 5.30am this morning by my son, who wanted to discuss the football match we’re going to attend on Sunday. Whilst I tried to reason with him that it was 3 days away and that he had his first school test this morning, so more sleep would be a good idea, he had the perfect retort: “But I’m awake now”. Some things you just can’t argue with. It’s becoming apparent that the excitement is about the fact that this is a boys only trip, rather than being football related: “Girls can’t go to football can they?” I tried to gently explain that of course girls can go to football, but that mummy has no real interest, but my confirmation that it was just the two of us going was enough for him. It’s a bit of rites of passage thing, your first football match. Well it was for me anyway. I can still remember my excitement at being allowed to go with my dad, before that I’d been relegated to shopping with my mum and aunt. The sheer scale of noise and people was like nothing I’d experienced before, and I was certainly bitten by the bug. It did make me feel an awful lot closer to my father too, a shared experience amongst a larger shared experience. I’m hoping that as he’s roughly the same age as I was, it’ll mean as much to him. Given the early comments from him I think he will enjoy it. Having said that, I had a nightmare last night that we got into the ground and he said “I don’t like it, I want to go home”. I’m hoping that isn’t my first prophetic dream.