Off the Cuff: Is tact intact, or tactlessness a fact?

I was watching a skit show on television the other day, one of the skits featuring a father (who hadn't the faintest inkling about child psychology) and his naturally curious son of about seven years.

In what looked evidently like a nightly routine, the father tucks his boy in bed and the youngster, before bidding dad goodnight, asks one last question. In this particular episode, the question was, "Dad, why did Rover have to die?" The father replies that death is a part of life and we should all be prepared for it.

That should normally have sufficed, by way of an answer, but this particular father has to take it further, much further… "Why, death could visit us at any time," he tells the boy. "Tomorrow, for instance, I could keel over with a heart attack, or you could be hit by a truck… why tomorrow, let's not look so far ahead, tonight we might get swallowed up by an earthquake. That's the funny thing about life, my son. Anyway, sleep well. Goodnight."

There is much canned laughter, I am laughing as well, mainly because I know that this is just a comic take off on things. But later, when I get a chance to reflect, I question whether what the father was doing was indeed wrong at all? Was he right to be so open? Was that psychologically a terribly flawed move? What was his alternative? Pretend? Waffle on about Rover?

Seriously, I think if this were being discussed at a workshop there would possibly be no consensus on what constituted the best response "daddy should have made".

Well, set that argument aside for the moment… Here's another, in the guise of "what's the best response son should have offered". This is not the son of the comic skit. This is another son, whom I heard about in passing.

It appears that this son had a dad who was rather a reflected image of my own self in that he loved to do the one thing that he somehow was never born to do. Which is, to cook. The difference between us lay in the fact that he made no secret of his aspirations. Day after day he would arise early and make elaborate preparations for the culinary feast (or nightmare) ahead.

Herbs, spices, sauces, meats and vegetables of all kinds were experimented with, without the dad achieving much more success than to rate a "one" out of 10. The son, because he couldn't bring himself to tell his father what an appalling cook he truly was, finally took to sabotaging his dad's preparations, hiding away the essential ingredients for the following day in the most bizarre places. These ingredients would only be found days later, when the father had already made other plans (that were also on the verge of being sabotaged!) Was that the proper response of an offspring, I wondered?

Why not face up to dad and tell him? "We love you dad, but please stay out of the kitchen."

These were some of the thoughts that visited me recently when my own son voiced a sudden craving for burgers and I, in a moment of utter daring, let the incarcerated chef in me tiptoe out of the closet. I dashed off secretly to the supermarket, picked up the buns, the burgers, the iceberg lettuce, the sauce and the frozen potato strips. Then I marched home victoriously and set about the task of assuaging those teenage taste buds.

When it was time for dinner, I (after what I thought was a normal moment of panic) carried the plate of burgers and French fries across to his room. His eyes dilated with what I took for surprise, then he said, "Dad, why did you trouble. Mac's is just down the road. I could have got them from there."

Now, here's a young man who knows a thing or two about "dad psychology".