I KNOW, it's nauseatingly cutesy to think that every word that comes out of your child's mouth is a thing to marvel at but this week my 10-year-old son came up with not only a brilliant phrase but, possibly, a revolutionary concept in social services – Guide Dogs for the Blind Drunk.
I must first explain that guide dogs have been the hot topic recently in my home. It's been guide dogs this and guide dogs that. It did not start, as you'd expect, with genuine compassion for the suffering of the optically impaired, but rather when t
he kids realised they couldn't take their new dog, Hilda, into most of Glasgow's parks – the only dogs that are permitted entry being, as the many signs indicate, guide dogs.
"Blind people are so lucky!" my daughter protested.
Not being the kind of kids who take no for an answer, their first proposal was to get dark sunglasses and pretend Hilda was their guide dog. I tried to explain that if they took their sunglasses off to play, then they'd get caught and maybe arrested, and also that Hilda would have to go away for a long time to blind school to get her certificate. I was being a spoilsport, apparently.
So anyway, guide dogs were in their air on the day of the new concept. It was Saturday evening and me, girlfriend and bambinos were driving down Dumbarton Road, passing a pub, when a drunk man lunged into the road, waving and swearing at the cars, dragging his terrified Jack Russell on a leash. I slammed on the brakes and the Jack Russell, as if on cue, looked left and right for oncoming traffic, then dragged the drunk across to safety.
"Wow! The dog saved his life," my son said. "Maybe he's a guide dog."
"Don't be silly," I replied, "guide dogs are just for blind people."
"But he had his eyes closed, Dad, maybe he was blind."
I explained that the man was not blind, but blind drunk, and thus new concept was born – a set of sub-departments of Guide Dogs for the Blind, for different kinds of blindness: alcohol related; moral blindness; blinded by love, etc.
Much laughter, but long after I thought the joke was over the kids went on brainstorming as if they were a couple of nanny-state social planners.
If they had guide dogs at every pub then all the drunks would get home safely; if the drunks had an animal to take care of them they wouldn't be so lonely and wouldn't need to drink; and if they drank less they wouldn't put the dogs in danger on roads.
Then my son suggested that all of the dogs on death row at the dog pound should be given to drunk men – that way they could save each other.
Ah, I thought to myself, almost teary eyed, only a child could take two social problems, put them together and create a solution. If only we adults could show as much creativity in our compassion.
It was only with my daughter's next suggestion that I realised we were all barking up the wrong tree.
"Yeah Dad, if you got blind drunk then we could get a guide dog and play with it in the park."
I put an end to such silliness at which point the kids went in the huff over the fact I refused to get wasted and that their newly invented social service didn't actually exist.
The full article contains 588 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
