My Son - The Cockerel

My eldest son has moved back in with us, and with him came his handstand bars, his weighted vest and his tub of creatine.

A typical day on my son’s own terms usually doesn’t begin until late morning, when he emerges from his room, only to disappear back into it with a large iced coffee and a bowl of ice water to dunk his face in. This, I learn, is called looksmaxxing, and apparently I should give it a try too, because then I wouldn’t look quite so puffy in the mornings. Thanks very much, I think, taking a critical look at the bags under my eyes.

When it comes to food, I learn that protein is the be-all and end-all and that vegetables are actually unhealthy. Right, I think, and carry on trying to get thirty different plants onto my plate every week. I don’t argue. After all, there’s no herb strong enough to cure his slightly warped idea of a Stone Age diet.

Still, he’s not entirely wrong, at least when it comes to protein. It’s just the quantities he consumes that seem a little excessive to me: a whole pack of eggs a day is compulsory, plus meat, and then there’s the protein shake, whose powder has once again become a kitchen staple since he moved back in.

By now, even his little brother has caught the bug. The other day, the two of them were sitting companionably side by side, deep in discussion about a video on Haaland’s diet they had apparently just watched. Because although his little brother is certainly impressed when he does handstand push-ups, he thinks the training itself is rather boring. Haaland, however, has given them some common ground. While the younger one admires his football skills, the older one is a fan of his diet. My thirty plants clearly don’t stand much of a chance against a Norwegian centre-forward who swears by eggs, meat and raw milk.

Apart from that, our cockerel struts around the flat bare-chested, stops in doorways and flexes his muscles. I find this highly entertaining. Because what I’m witnessing here could appear in any biology textbook under display behaviour: the puffed-up silhouette, the flaunting of costly traits. The only problem is that the intended audience for this performance is neither his mother nor his little brother. We are merely accidental spectators, while the real showing-off happens later on Instagram, where every evening calisthenics session is carefully documented and rewarded with little hearts.

Calisthenics is basically the cool, modern version of gymnastics and bodybuilding. During these workouts he huffs, grunts and groans so impressively that I regularly imagine myself on a Roman galley in Ben-Hur. The amount of testosterone he radiates is remarkable and can probably still be smelled out in the stairwell.

Kind and considerate as he is, he recommends a few pull-ups for the pain in my upper back. You should know that pull-ups have never been within the realm of my abilities. Not even when I was young, and I weighed considerably less back then. So I hang from the bar in pain and try at least to get my feet off the floor. He even praises me for it. And surprisingly, the exercise is remarkably effective and actually makes my back feel better almost immediately.

I have to give him this: he has grown into a genuinely good-looking guy. Even so, the constant talk about protein and testosterone is increasingly getting on my nerves. Because for all his cockerel behaviour, most of the time he still strikes me as a big puppy who hasn’t quite worked out what to do with all that strength.

So I simply hope he’ll grow out of it and that, thirty years from now, he’ll be standing in his own kitchen counting his thirty plants too.

Or maybe by then I’ll be doing pull-ups.