Lisa: A lesson in hanging in there

G’day, for those of you with teenagers or who have suffered PTSD (Post Teen Stress Disorder), this story is for you. Lisa and Dean had 5 boys! Lisa was a talented and no-nonsense school teacher and Dean was a fairly compliant builder.

You can’t have five boys and not have problems as they move from dependence to  independence, or as some comic described it, the move from “Infancy to Adultery”. Stephen, their eldest was a bit of a rebel and as he got older, hung out with the wrong group. Fortunately his dad was heavily involved in Rugby League so all the boys learnt the rules and played the game. But the teen years for Lisa were very demanding as she felt she had to be mum and dad to all six.

However, Stephen’s problems came to a head one Saturday night when the police called mum at 1a.m. to say Stephen had been involved in a bit of a skirmish and had bad mouthed the police trying to restore calm, so he’d been locked up for a while – would she come and get him. You can imagine mum’s mood.

When Lisa got there, she apologized profusely for Stephen’s behaviour, they let him go with a formal caution and Stephen asked if mum could also drop his mate Leon home. Lisa obliged but the trip home was not pleasant. Lisa was seething in the front and the boys were bad mouthing the police in the back – saying the pigs had it in for them, discrimination, bullying and any other cliché they could think of.

Half way home, Lisa could stand it no more – still seething she pulled off the road, slammed to a halt and between gritted teeth offered these prophetic words to both boys “right I’m going to put you both straight in five words, ready – “life sux, cop it sweet!”

Then drove on home with nobody saying a word. That didn’t fix the problem however and as soon as school was over, Stephen high-tailed it up to Schoolies on the Gold Coast and sent his mum a message saying he’d met some mates and was going to flat with them.

Fortunately his parents didn’t succumb to his messages along the lines of “Hi mum, no mon, send some”. So Stephen had to get money somewhere to support his habit. However, in his rugby playing days, although he wasn’t a great player, he was a terrific ref, very fair and took no nonsense. Up in Queensland refs were in high demand so Queensland could win back the State of Origin!

So he joined the ref’s association to get work. A couple of older guys could see that Stephen was pretty mixed up but basically a good kid so they took him under wing, backed his application to referee and even went further. One of them found work for Nathan as an apprentice roof tiler.

With similar skills to his dad, Nathan blitzed it, met  a girl, moved out into his own apartment, now has two kids and comes down to visit the oldies regularly and to put his brothers straight . mothers’ unconditional love will make its mark and is probably the greatest force for good in our entire lives. But I’m reminded of another burden for mum when boys do come home - if they flop on the lounge, dominate the devices, flog the fridge and leave you all the cleaning up – then you either married them or gave birth to them.