The Men in My Life : Father, Husband and Son

When I read the topic for this week's hubmob, a rush of emotions ran through me. Men the opposite sex! There's so much material here that it would take us a hub a day for the rest of the year to do it justice. However we only have one week, so let's make it count! :)

May be it is true that we came from different planets. John Gray's Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus did make a lot of sense to me when I first read it as a teenager. Now after ten years of being with the same man, it makes no sense. So now I've decided not to make any sense of them and just enjoy them the way they come. A whole lot less stressful that way, trust me. So here are a few incidents with the men in my life that make me laugh, now, not then :)

The first man who made an impact in my life was naturally my father. One of my first memories of my Dad is as a two year old, when he was driving the old scooter which he had nicknamed "Dinky" after my mother. The freshly washed scooter was taking us on a picnic. The fact that he had his angling rod with him and that we were driving along a canal was incidental. Every few miles he would stop the scooter, our picnic basket, I and my mother would get off the scooter (in that order.) Then he would try out the angling rod, declare the current too swift and we would reload in reverse order and proceed forth.

Eventually having come all the way from Roorkee within shouting distance of Haridwar, we decided to take a look around. In the town, with all the hustle and bustle not looking too appealing. We all descended from the scooter except dad, who took a look left and right and decided that was the limit of the sight seeing. So we decided to get out of town and eat our picnic in a more appealing spot. So i was put on the scooter and my dad took off, leaving my mother stranded with a picnic basket in the middle of Haridwar market!

Being newly wed and just about getting used to running the household, I was getting run off my feet. I would crib about how I did all the chores around the house and so my hubby decided to help me out a bit. Now he could not tell the difference between fresh and stale vegetables so I had to get them. The eggs and bread bit got done on my evening walk, so he decided to help by doing the canteen shopping.

So I gave him a list which I thought was simple enough. One toothpaste tube, one tomato sauce bottle, one washing powder packet, and four soaps. Guess what I got? One Colgate toothpaste, one Maggi Hot and Sweet sauce, one packet of Surf excel and four Wheel Clothes washing soaps. Needless to say that he never went to do our canteen shopping alone ever again.

The problem with having a boy is that it is difficult to take him with you to the beauty salon. Naturally till he was a baby of up to two years it was no problem. He would be happy with whatever toys I had brought along to play with and would sit and amuse himself. In fact one he even slept off on the bed the beautician used for facials. However, now that he's an active four year it is best not to take him along.

However with no baby sitters handy and a husband who has no fixed work hours it is difficult to leave him at home when you need to get that threading done. Plus you figure that it will be just a matter of half an hour so he should survive. That's where I made a mistake. We reached the parlor and there was a long queue ahead of me, so while he was fine for the first half an hour he was tired soon after. Just as it was my turn to get my threading done, I got into the chair and the beautician got a phone call. That was the last straw for him. He started crying and amidst his sobs he uses his father's pet phrase, "Mama" sob sob "Mama move your butt" sob sob "lets go home" more sobbing. To say that I was embarrassed is the understatement of the year.