My second cause for excitement came later that same afternoon. My son and I were in the family room by ourselves. My wife and daughter were out, our middle son upstairs playing. I suggested we watch a movie. We agreed on a scifi-thriller. We settled on one we had not seen before. It had an ‘R’ rating, but the story line seemed to be good. “Here is what we will do,” I said. “We will begin watching it and if there is language or nudity or gory violence, we will turn it off,” I said. He agreed and we proceeded to watch. Apart from an occasional less offensive curse word, there was nothing ‘R’ rated about the move. It as a low-budget scifi flick with a decent story-line and good acting. Then it happened! I later told my wife that it came out of the blue and had nothing whatsoever to do with the story. A woman’s breast is exposed! I am reaching for the remote, but the neat thing is that my son bolted out of the family room! I apologized to my son telling him how sorry I was that it had happened. Later my wife and I had a conversation about it. I realized that I needed to have “the talk” with my son. “So much for my nicely laid out plans about how to approach this,” I thought. The next morning instead of gathering in our cave, I suggested make some breakfast together. In that relaxing setting I approached the movie incident from the day before. I asked him why he ran out of the room. “I didn’t want to be in there,” came his reply. “Well, I want you to know that I am proud of you for making that decision,” I said. I continued, “That kinda opens the door for the decision that I had mentioned to you when we first began this journey.” He faced turned red as his face turned toward the floor. “What’s wrong,” I asked? “Nothing,” came the reply. “Do you want to have this decision,” I asked? His face was beet red at this point and his eyes were firmly locked on a point on the floor as he said, “I guess so.” “I can promise you that I am not going to force you,” I paused. “In fact, I would rather wait until a later time, but if you would like to talk about it now, then we can,” I said. It was like someone had opened the pressure-release valve on this head as the red quickly disappeared. “I think I would rather wait,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Are you sure,” I asked? We can talk about it today if you would like.” “No, I would rather wait,” he said, a small smile coming across his face. I was so happy to hear that, it was all that I could do to not bust out laughing! “That is fine son,” I said. “We can certainly wait until a later time. You will know when it is right.” “Thanks dad,” he said as he gave me a hug.
This hugging thing is becoming quite a regular occurrence. I love it!