The Guardian's American Psyche told me about this:
This sort of thing interferes with one of my long-held dreams which is to raise my family in America. Not that I have a child to raise, but if I did, or did in the future, I have always thought it would be better to do it in America.
For this, I blame The Wonder Years. This was all the bits of my childhood that I felt I missed. It had a Dad, it had a lovely Mum (OK, I didn't miss that), there were brothers and sisters, cookies, white picket fences and carefree ridings of bikes, and I fancied Winnie. I know that’s wrong, but everyone did.
I loved the exceptional unexceptionable-ness of it all. So I first fell in love with America with stories of Kevin Arnold doing gym class with his best mate Paul, and walking Winnie home and carrying her books and getting all tongue tied, like I used to with Claire Williams, who looked a bit like Winnie, but who refused to go out with me even after I played the lead in the school play* and gave her flowers.
And I cried – I mean actually really cried – when it was over, and Kevin’s Dad died and everyone sort of grew up and moved on. Because it felt like an end to my own second childhood. I guess that’s when I realised (ha ha – funny Wonder Years-related joke there, done in the narrator’s voice) that I really wanted was for my lad to carry some girl’s books home, and to advise him what to do when she takes someone else to the School Prom and to have my heart broken when my daughter leaves home and marries Ross from Friends.
I really want that.
But I don’t want my daughter to complain about me buying the wrong coloured Saab for her when she is 16.
* They still talk about my performance as The Tin Man in hushed tones at Neston Comp.
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2 comments:
surely one can avoid such behaviors by a) not raising a spoiled little shit of a child, b) spending enough time with your offspring to know their favorite color or even c) letting them buy their own damn car.
p.s. would be absolutely willing to exchange places with you for child-rearing purposes or otherwise. then, i can harass dan at closer proximity.
You raise some good points, especially a). Apparently it was all about a pizza anyway so my dream lives on.
And I'm guessing from the spelling of color that you are not offering to swap places from somewhere near Croydon, and on that basis I am in. (Is it one in, one out now then?). I have a nice flat in Bow you can use but Dan harassment usually requires a tube journey into town.
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