Eight’s great

He is perhaps the best age – still cute, Jonah’s escaped the snaggle toothed grin of most of his classmates. His hair’s still just about blonde and floppy, though going increasingly dishwater. He thin as a rake, and getting ganglier by the day, but it’s a good few years before the acne gets him. He’s still my little boy, but only just. What have we got, four years, five, before he can look down at my parting? Maybe next year I could wear his shoes – not that I’d want to. He’ll start to smell soon. And other things, that will put paid to our morning snuggles.

Luckily, today’s birthday jitters’ pre-dawn get up is generally confined to the distant past. In a few years to come, we’ll struggle to wake him for anything.

These days, he’s easier to handle, but he’s not really changed. He still goes goofy in company, looping around and cackling manically. But then, Tom’s a bit like that, being much more self possessed at home when he can focus and get things done.

Jonah’s still monosyllabic on the phone, thanking his beloved grandma robotically for her thoughtful gifts – things to make and do that hopefully the childminder will get stuck into with him, saving me the bother. Crafts aren’t really my strong suit. I’m glad she bothered. I was so tete en l’air after Christmas and with going back to work, I forgot to buy him a card. I’m not much into birthday cards either for the record. Luckily, neither is Jonah. We made it up to him though (not that he noticed). We took him out for burgers with a kid from his class, a nice boy with an older brother who has manners that put my son’s to shame, and a conversational gentility that brought out Jonah’s inner heathen. I found myself acting up to make up for it, asking the poor lad questions that I hoped didn’t make me sound uncool, but he didn’t seem all that impressed. The pair of them, and Ava, got jacked up on sugar with a bright blue bubblegum flavoured ice cream the restaurant presented them  with after our meal for free, but we’d got cupcakes at the ready at home, and by the end of the evening, all three kids, (sleepy Ava looked off her tits) were spinny eyed and floppy, playing statucal musics – a game of Jonah’s invention, whereby one dances when the music stops and stands still when it starts.

I shouldn’t compare, but it’s hard not to. Perhaps it’s having an older brother but the friend seemed so mature, with his massive bike and interesting food repertoire which doesn’t revolve around gallons of ketchup with every meal; his massive bike, and shoes with laces. Jonah can just about manage both, but really would rather not, so after years persisting with skills that require more bilateral coordination than Jonah can be bothered  to manage (I had to put my foot down at the weekend about Jonah using the correct hand for his knife and fork because watching him cack handedly tear at his food with his cutlery all wrong – Jonah’s not left handed, he’s no handed – was causing me to become irrationally incensed)  I’ve all but given up.

We can just about get him to learn his spellings these days, with the odd bribe or two, and I had a row with Tom at the weekend about continuing to read to him, rather than encouraging him to read by himself. I’ve got fed up with the epic pre-bed performance we’ve been putting on for years, but a timely letter from the school finally convinced Tom I’m right. Jonah can read perfectly when it flashes up on a video game, but sitting still to read a book isn’t something that comes naturally to him… but he’s getting there.

We ended up buying Jonah bitcoins with his birthday money. Perhaps it’s coming from an ex -trader father, and a mother with a genetic legacy of tech geekery, for all it seems to have skipped a generation. But if there are two things Jonah does get, it’s money and computers and the idea of a virtual currency has gripped the boy which an unnatural fervor in one so young.  His grasp of economics is growing, and it’s a topic about which you can have proper full-on conversations with him, where he fails abysmally at general chit chat.

Perhaps it’s because when he was little, we spent a scary period where we didn’t have any money after Tom lost his job in the financial crisis. Jonah’s learnt the value of it, and would rather invest it than spend it on more shit he doesn’t need. We talked about the fact they could go up or down, that he should never invest more than he can afford to lose, and the idea that bitcoins could become more valuable if they are adopted more widely, or could become worthless if governments regulate against them, or rival currencies are adopted instead and then he went to bed happy with a quick cuddle and the standard delaying tactic question he has learnt by rote: “How was your day?”

“How was YOUR day?” I asked.

“It was medium,” he replied. Standard.  My aspie son at eight. I wouldn’t have him any other way.