Virtually every child thinks adults are boring dolts

Adults are boring, is what my son says. The only thing that is nice about being an adult is that they do not have to go to school. Besides that, everything else about adults to him is boring.

This conclusion started some tome December 2013, when the Splash at the Village Market was brought down to make way for a new hotel.

We loved to go to Splash. I would sit and chat with my girlfriend over popcorn and ice cream while we watched our children play on the water slides.

Most of the time we had to drag them out of there at 6 pm. They barely made it home with their eyes open. So when he learned that Splash was brought down so a hotel could be built in its place, he was horrified.

He never stepped out of the house for a full week in protest.

Later that year, my friend and I introduced our children to children’s yoga.

Their session used to start at the same time as that of the adults, but ended early. By the time we were done, the children had already had their lunch. As is the norm with women, we would sit and talk over lunch, and carry on after, because mostly we had no place to rush to, and more importantly, it was the only time we could catch up.

My son had already formed the habit of sitting close to me, waiting for a moment when the conversation would lull and use this opportunity to whisper urgently, “Mum! Twende.”

Of course, I would finally get up, and by then he would be irritatingly restless.

On our way home he would say several times, “Adults are boring.”

Another time, my sister and a friend came over for lunch and of course we talked about everything under the sun.

I had already known that our talk used to bore him, and asked him to go and play with his friends while we chatted away.

He refused.

He followed us into the bedroom, sat by the balcony, and started flipping through the television channels. When he realised that his tactics were not distracting us from our jibber-jabber, he started to clean windows!

When I asked him why he was washing windows, he said that all we were doing was talking to no end.

I thought this was his way to get attention, so I broke away from the group to be with him for a while. He told me how he does not understand how adults meet, sit and talk for hours on end.

“But that’s what adults do!” I tried to explain, which of course was not helping.

I asked him to assume that my sister and my friend were his brother and friend, what would he do if they paid him a visit?

“We would go out and play! Kick a ball around, or go for a walk. Better still, go skating or swimming. Then go to a fast food joint and eat chips and chicken,” was his response.

I was perplexed! Then it hit me that he does not really think that adults are boring.

His individuality was already showing and he was reacting like a perfectly normal teenager.