First of all I need to say I can’t get enough of hanging out with ‘little’. Our relationship has progressed so far and I am so proud of him. Last Saturday he came over to my house for a hang out. I picked him up around 9:30 and we ended up together all day. We really didn’t have hard and fast plans. Just hang out. I told him I need to change oil on my car soon and he suggested we get it done that day. (I swear I’m not enlisting him to do my chores, it’s just the way the conversation goes sometimes) What the heck! It was cold out but we turned on the old propane heater in the garage and set to work. This is his second time of helping me out. He got right to work as if he knew exactly what to do. Everything went well, I gave him the necessary tools, and loosened the nut when he couldn’t. Other than that he did it all by himself. I stupidly enough didn’t check over his work (he’s 11 years old) as close as I should have and we found out the hard way that he had screwed in the oil filter a little cock-eyed. Trust me, check it. 3.5 quarts of oil is a lot harder to clean off the garage floor than you’d think. ha ha O well, we weren’t going anywhere so it was no big deal and we had a good laugh about it. My girlfriend called when we were almost done with the car and I asked her how close to 3,000 miles she was. I was stunned when she knew off the top of her head. I had no idea she payed such close attention to those details. She was within 150 miles. I asked young ‘little’ if he was down for another car and he was. We drove over, did the exchange, came back and zipped her car out too, sans oil spill.
After a hard mornings work we went inside, I whooped up some Venison Hash, a real hardy mans meal, while he played games on my computer. We decided to sit down and watch a netflix movie. By the way, it’s really hard to pick a movie when you have to consider the fact that you’re watching it with an 11 year old (man, the things that I learn through our relationship due to being the youngest for four in my own family). Now judging from the movies that he and I have talked about before, I don’t think his filter is on too high when it comes to choosing, but still, as long as he’s watching it with me, it will be an 11 year old appropriate movie. We looked in the action section and found Karate Kid. He wasn’t overly excited about it until I explained the Crane to him along with demonstration and what that scene meant to all men between the ages of 22 and 30.
Crane (the move of the century)
We gorged ourselves on the venison and sat back and watched the movie. WOW! Movies today are so different. The character development and story line are so much more relied upon rather than constant action. I loved it… ‘little’ liked it too but I could tell that it was just barely keeping his attention. I couldn’t believe it but when we were mid movie he actualy took a bunch of pillows and threw them between the two of us and leaned on my shoulder to rest. No kid has ever done that to me before. There was an honest trust between us that he was able to do that. I still don’t even know what to say about it….hmmm. Really cool and heart warming. Alright ** shift in my seat/clear throat** back to manly food eating and movie watching… It was great and he was jazzed by the marshal arts. We both got up at the end, practiced our wax on/wax off technique, did a few cranes and I brought him home.
Now it’s question time… ‘little’ doesn’t really have to much of an idea on how money works. I want to show him that he put in a few honest hours of work and that I appreciate it. Now I kind of get the feeling that Big Brothers Big Sisters doesn’t want money to come into our relationship (gifts, allowance, presents, etc.) but I don’t think this really falls under that category. I don’t want our relationship to turn into me providing him with work and him making money (boss/employee type relationship) and I don’t want him to expect me to be giving him money. I mainly want to sugggest that if he wants something, than he has the mind and skills to go out, set his mind to what it is he’s looking for, and honestly attain it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be money based, it could be applied to so many thing. (money/item, school/career, etc.). My plan is to pay him $10 for his help and actually give him $5 for himself, and set up a college account for him to put the other $5 in. I wonder what any of you think about that. I really fear money becoming a main stay in our relationship so I’ll try to really separate the two but I think it could be a great life lesson for him. He doesn’t have to rely on other people to give him what he wants, he can go out and acquire it himself. I know he’s young yet but I’m excited to get started.
Let me know what you think, or if you have any similar ideas of what it is that we could experience together along this same vein.