Peter Bromhead: Stretching the limits of parental obligation

Cartoon / Peter Bromhead

Naturally, we all try our best to be caring and attentive parents.

Unfortunately, my six-year-old son is setting the bar slightly too high for this old-timer, with demands that stretch the limits of parental obligation.

Obsessed with being a professional buccaneer, he's now waking me before dawn, to remind me about an agreement concluded - in a non-thinking, foolish moment - to assist him recover a pirate's treasure chest.

His arousal methods are unnerving. He tends to interrupt my snoring by whispering in my ear in some sort of ancient seafarer dialect - a sort of Cornish old English - while tapping my face with a pirate's toy replacement hand hook.

No wonder I'm walking around wild-eyed, suffering from sleep loss andexuding the gibberish mannerisms of the haunted.

The caregiver believes it's my fault for continuing to create plausible fantasies, such as the pot of gold coins he recently dug up from the base of a rainbow that had been hovering over the Auckland Domain.

Having noted where rainbows arc in the area, I took the trouble of burying a small clay pot full of tinsel-wrapped chocolate coins for him to later discover. Now it's a pirate's treasure chest seen at Kelly Tarlton's that's occupying his thoughts. He expects me to recover the waterlogged box, so he can reveal the presumably exciting contents.

The problem is a slight matter of logistics.

First, I can barely swim - never mind conduct a deep-sea diving operation. Second, the chest is in an aquarium that's private property. More alarmingly, the pool is patrolled around the clock by sinister looking sharks.

Once again, deceitful lateral thinking is the only way to recover my crumbling status as an "action man".

I've been forced to purchase a similar antique chest, drape it in seaweed and fill it with suitable trappings - like gold-wrapped chocolate bars, plastic skulls and other glittery objects that I presume pirates like to hoard.

Proud of my latest creation, I gave the caregiver a sneak preview of my efforts. She wasn't impressed.

"He's over buccaneering," she informed me, sniffing disdainfully at the disagreeable smell of rotting seaweed.

"He's now obsessed with Wallace and Gromit animations and wants you to build him a working space rocket to go and collect cheese from the moon."

"No trouble," I wearily replied, reaching for the key to my workshop.