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My son Ernie is an enigma - happy to stand on stage in front of 200 adults and do jokes, but nervous to leave the house or get on a train or even try out things that it's obvious he will like. If I wasn't exactly the same I am sure I'd find that very confusing.
You're so much like me. I'm sorry.
We had to leave pretty early to be sure of getting to the exhibition for our 10am slot time, but Ernie was making it clear that he wanted to stay home and have a chill day. But I'd already sunk £50 into this experience and wasn't going to give in. He ran away and hid, but we managed to get him dressed and out the house and as we walked to the train station he seemed happy and was joking around.
Once at the station though, now another £50 down for two early morning train tickets, he remembered he didn't want to do this and said he wanted to go home and to see him mum. He freaked out as the train arrived and I had to carry him on. So far the father/son day wasn't going well and my fellow commuters must have been wondering if this was a very poor kidnap attempt.
On the train he was fine again, if a little annoyed with me. He looked out the window and sucked on his lip and we watched the sun coming up.
The rest of the journey went OK. Ernie was nervous about sitting next to a stranger on the Windrush Line, but otherwise it looked like we were on.
We got to the exhibition about an hour early as it turned out, but it was open and they were happy to let us in as it was almost empty. Ernie wanted to go home straight away, but I managed to persuade him to have a look, hoping his love of the Titanic would return. The first couple of rooms were just full of artefacts, mainly from sister ships (don't know why they couldn't get stuff from the Titanic, but then I never saw the end of the exhibition- maybe something happened).
We got to a room with VR googles and Ernie was not happy. I managed to get him sitting down and the goggles on, but he had already decided this was too scary. I tried to get embrolied in the virtually real world, but the problem with it is that it cut off sight and sound in the actual world and I couldn't really leave Ernie on his own. Even though this particular bit of the experience was only highlighting the musicians and didn't really involve any tragedy (at the end the boat goes underwater and the musicians go up to the stars) Ernie was not having it. I tried to watch whilst he sat on my knee, but it was hard to concentrate and I found the presentation a bit mawkish and cartoonish (though the tech is pretty cool).
We made an attempt to move onwards, but Ernie was not having it and after maybe ten minutes of trying to make this work we had to exit the space and go home. There's only so much you can do and I had promised him that if he didn't like it we'd leave. I had thought he would like it though.
Who would have thought that a trip to the Titanic could end up as such a disaster?
We got home by 11am. It was not quite the father/son day I had been hoping for. But we went and played in the park and messed around on the new gym equipment they put in there a couple of weeks ago.
This is all part of the joy of parenting and I am glad we tried and that Ernie didn't mind the train bit as much as he thought he would. I have to give him the chance to be more adventurous, but if he ever wants to be, that will come in its own time. I wish I was more adventurous too -and I am better than I used to be - but have spent a lot of my life not taking chances and avoiding things that make me feel nervous and uncomfortable. It might just be in our DNA. Very happy to try and make a roomful of strangers laugh, terrified of standing in a roomful of strangers and be expected to talk to any of them on a one to one basis.
Nervous of anything outside of our weird and specific comfort zone. Almost the photographic negative of a regular person who is happy trying the usual stuff but would die if they were asked to do comedy to a crowd.
If I'd have been on the Titanic I would have stayed in my cabin the whole time and missed all the fun - until right at the end when I'd have grabbed my violin and relished the chance to perform. My lack of violin playing ability might have ruined the moment a bit though. It'd be sad if the story of the last minutes of the ship was the proper musicians kicking the arse of some prick who'd turned up and tried to jam with them.
