A real gentleman

Day 20 of 'The Daily Post'.

Last night 12-yo was in a concert. It wasn’t a very formal affair, a school do, so we thought we’d take 8-yo and 5-yo. We went in two cars because this is the Midwest and we have a minimum personal mileage allocation which we have to reach by 31st December. We don’t really. We went in two cars because 12-yo had to be there half an hour early, and I guessed that one of us might be leaving half way through.

I was right about the half way through thing. 5-yo did well, but there is a limit to how still someone of that age can sit, with only the vocal excursions of middle and high schoolers as entertainment. We were sitting in the back row, which was good for the escape strategy, but bad in that there was a man with a video camera on a tripod next to us, filming the event. I was aware that every whispered question, or silent pretended giggle, or wiggle, or experimentation with balancing on the flip-up seat at different angles, might be captured on the recording. It raised the stakes. So when 12-yo had done his bit, Husband took 5-yo home. I was surprised that 8-yo decided to stay, since it was too dark to play with the trusty Bionicles which he had brought with him.

The back two or three rows had thinned out a bit by this stage, so I normally wouldn’t have been very sensitive to 8-yo’s wiggling. (Oh you naughty naughty parents who just stay for your child’s bit, without even having the ‘get out of concert free’ pass of a bored younger sibling.) But there was that video camera just next to us. In between songs, I whispered to him:

“You have to keep still. Every noise you make will be picked up by that microphone, and it’ll spoil the recording. You chose to stay. You could have gone home with Dad if you were bored. Why did you stay, anyway?”

He replied:

“So you wouldn’t be lonely”.

And if that wasn’t a heart-melting moment, that made me regret the mildly accusatory tone of my question, then I don’t know what would be.

Sitting in the dark, next to my small, tender-hearted, only slightly fidgety companion, and his two Bionicles, I wondered what finer escort a woman could have for an evening concert. Certainly you couldn’t ask for one with purer motives.

He definitely deserved his helping of the brownies and fruit punch which were served afterwards. And yes, he did know they would be there. But no, I don't think that was the reason he stayed. Come on... Even a true gentleman might harbour the tiniest glimmer of self-interest in his most gallant moments.