Saturday 31 October 2015

A Boy

On a recent flight into Lagos, walking down the aisle towards where I was seated was a nondescript man accompanied by a six year old boy who I assumed was his son. The little boy trodded excitedly behind his father but as he made to move into the row which had their seats, his head collided with a dark blue suitcase that his father had just lifted to place in the overhead luggage compartment. He let out a loud yelp and burst into tears. The father used one hand to push the bag into the compartment and the other to rub the little boy`s head, in an attempt to console him. Then he said something that struck me.

" Stop crying, okay? You know I didn`t do that on purpose". He said softly in a voice dripping with irritation.

The boy didn`t stop crying, in fact he cried harder. I would have been very surprised if he had. Was the rationale behind the bag hitting his head expected to make him stop crying? Seriously? I found it odd that the father expected his young son to be understanding.

Then it occurred to me just how completely different from one another we are, men and women. I replayed the scene in my head, but this time the man was a woman. A woman would not use the reason behind the incident as a pacifier, she would simply show the boy some love. A simple hug or a kiss would have taken the pain away. Shikena! No need for long grammar.

It must be a man thing to put logic before pain, I thought to myself. But then I looked at the boy, alas he was still crying. Hmmm, why was he still crying? Isn`t he a man? He should man up jare. Then I had an eureka moment! He didn`t stop crying because he wasn`t yet a man. Still an innocent boy, untouched by parental and societal influences dictating what to do, where to do and how to do. A few years down the line, through either force, mandate or persuasion he would become a man, tough and ready to take on the world. A replica of his father. 

But on that beautiful summer morning in Paris, he was a mere six year old who would have stopped crying if only his father had remembered that he was just a boy.



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