Things my girlfriend and I have argued about (online version)

56

First Born cut his hair on Friday morning. Apparently the casual notion that his fringe was too long and didn't look sufficiently wicked strolled through his head, so — without the use of anything as lame as a mirror, naturally — he got a pair of scissors and cut his own hair; he now looks like a tiny Howard Devoto. Except blond. And without the spectacles. («So, not very much like Howard Devoto at all, then. Also, we were born in 1987 and have entirely no idea who Howard Devoto is.» — Everyone.)

Now, Margret and I don't do that widespread thing of transferring ownership of the children depending on the situation; 'My son is a neurosurgeon,' 'Your son has just poured byriani behind the radiator,' that kind of thing. We do another thing. Margret, who is the one to spot Jonathan appears to be the first seven-year-old to be suffering from male pattern baldness, marches into the room where I'm sitting, reading the paper, and, looming over me with her arms knotted tightly across her ribs says:

'Jonathan's cut loads of his hair off.'

I look up at her and, after a few moments of thought, naturally reply:

'Tsk.'

She's unable to find herself entirely satisfied with this.

'So, that's it then, is it? You're all parented out now?'

'What am I supposed to do?' I ask, bewildered. 'He's cut the hair off. Do you want me to wrap it in frozen peas and race to the hospital to see if they can do an emergency weave?'

'I think,' she replies, 'that you should go and speak to him.'

And there it is. There is only one specific type of occasion when Margret feels I should 'go and speak to' one of the children, and that's when they have done something forehead-slappingly idiotic. The implication she is making is that Idiocy is my area. That only I can speak to the children when they've done something comprehensively crackbrained because, unlike her, I can speak The Language Of Fools. 'Maybe you can get through to him,' she's saying, 'Because you know how the asinine mind works.'

I drop the newspaper with a sigh, resigned, now, to the fact that I'll never get to find out what Kevin Spacey's favourite pasta dish is, and plod into the other room. Jonathan is happily drawing a picture at the table.

'Jonathan?'

'Yes?'

'Don't do stuff like that. Your hair looks stupid.'

I see his eyes flick, for the briefest moment, up to my hair. I'm dead in the water and we both know it.

'I like it,' he says.

'Oh, you like it, do you?' I laugh. 'So, it doesn't matter that everyone else in the world thinks it looks stupid? You like it? That's… Um, that's really good, actually. That's good.' I ruffle (what's left of) his hair.

Margret walks in behind me. Quickly, I furrow my eyebrows and point a sharp finger at Jonathan.

'So? Is that clear?'

'Yes,' he replies.

I walk out past Margret. 'Let's not say another word about this, then.'

Of course, next week he'll probably get into homemade tattoos, and his defence will begin, 'Well, Papa said…'

I have my bags packed ready.