Welcome to Hollywood

Two years ago I started a weekly blog on this site, that was on my sons 18th birthday. I have missed 2 weeks so far, the last 2 weeks. I have excuses for this, work and also helping my son. But thats okay, I can catch up, whether its writing something myself, or finding something I like of someone elses and publishing that.

This week this blog is for my son, who is now, no longer a teenager, this is to they/them.

I have looked back at the advice I was trying to give you in previous blogs and I think it all remains pretty valid. Please have a read if you ever think it will be useful.

In this one I am going to focus on your sense of humour. Despite your appearance of being sensible, you have an amazing sense of humour and an appreciation of the absurd as well as your default screen generation nihilism.

One memory I have of when you really made me laugh was when we were walking around local bars looking for saturday jobs for you. We had been going from shop to shop, bar to bar asking if they needed any workers without much luck, most people were too busy to talk.

I went into one bar and asked if they had any jobs and the barman was relatively unenthusiastic and said they weren't. Its fair to say that he was a gentleman who, how shall we say, liked to look after himself, he was relatively light on his feet, probably a good dancer, you know the sort. Friends with Dorothy, this video explains what I mean.

His eyes lit up when he saw you and all of a sudden he was chatting about you handing in a CV and that he would speak to his manager to see if there were any spaces.

We walked outside and I said to you;

"you do realise that if you work there, he's not allowed to physically touch you or do anything to you that you don't want to do"

In a very deadpan, almost resigned way, your immediate response was;

"Welcome to Hollywood"

You had to be there, but for me, I still laugh thinking about this.

Happy Birthday.

Don't forget the hidden pages on this site that only you can see. Come back to them anytime you need to.

Always be nice, never forget where you are from and the family around you supporting you, have humlity, and remeber people skills and being nice is more powerful than anything you can be taught and you have that in spades, make sure the people around you see it and that its not just saved for friends and strangers.