Things My Son Needs to Know About The World: From the New York Times Bestselling Author of Anxious People and My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

I really, really want to apologize for all those things. But when you’re the most angry at me, I want you to try to remember that, to me, you’ll always be the tiny one-year-old boy standing naked in the hallway with a toothless grin and a cuddly lion clutched to your chest. Whenever I’m difficult. Whenever I’m embarrassing. Unreasonable. Unfair. I want you to think back to that day. That day when you refused to tell me where the hell you’d hidden my damn car keys. And I want you to remember that it was you who started it.

Because we love you. That’s all this is about. We want you to be better than us. Because if our kids don’t grow up to be better than us, then what’s the point of all this? We want you to be kinder, smarter, more humble, more generous, and more selfless than we are. We want to give you the very best circumstances we can possibly provide.

Because we spent so long being the biggest narcissists in world history before we became parents and realized how unimportant we really were. The realization that you will, from that moment on, draw all your breaths through someone else’s lungs hits you harder when you aren’t prepared.

We actually haven’t got a clue what we’re really doing – having kids is in many ways like trying to drive a bulldozer through a china shop. With broken legs. Wearing a back-to-front ski mask. While drunk.

Because we want to be the best parents we ever could be. That’s all.

I just want you to know that I love you. Once you’re older, you’ll realize that I made an endless line of mistakes during your childhood. I know that. I’ve resigned myself to it. But I just want you to know that I did my very, very best. I left it all on the field. I gave this every ounce of everything I had.

If everyone wasn’t going in the same direction inside IKEA, there would be chaos, do you understand that? Civilization as we know it would collapse into a furious Judgement Day inferno of shadows and fire.

Honestly: you could drive the wrong way down the motorway and experience less hostility from strangers. You’re an outlaw.

Anyone can kill you after that. Them’s the rules.

And that, after a while, the contents of the boot become meaningless in comparison to the contents of the passenger seat.

Let function come before form. Buy the sofa you want, not the sofa you need. Trust me. You’ll never get the chance again.

So find someone who doesn’t love you for the person you are, but despite the person you are. And when you’re standing there, in the storage section at IKEA, don’t focus too much on the furniture. Focus on the fact that you’ve actually found someone who can see themselves storing their crap in the same place as your crap. Because, hand on heart: you have a lot of crap.

People sometimes ask me how I lived before I met your mother. I answer that I didn’t.

Because one day I’ll look away for two seconds and when I turn around again you’ll be all grown up.

So play. Learn. Grow up. Follow your passions. Find someone to love. Do your best. Be kind when you can, tough when you need to be. Hold on to your friends. Don’t go against the direction of the painted arrows in the floor. You’ll be just fine.

That, regardless of all other circumstances, it’s always 0–0 to begin with.

And I want you to know that I’ll never, ever, ever love you any less in that case. Or be any less proud of you. You’re my boy. When you were born, it was like someone carbonated the air in my lungs. Like you blew bubbles into my blood through a straw. My entire life was about nothing but me for twenty-five years, but then your mother came along and then you came along and now I wake up in the middle of the night several times a week and have to check you’re both still breathing before I can get back to sleep. Can you grasp that? If I’d acted this way before I became someone’s dad, they would have locked me up in a padded cell with an iPod full of dolphin songs. I’m not afraid of saying I love you. It’s just all the rest of it that scares the living crap out of me.

And I know all kids sooner or later reach a point in their lives where they realize their dads aren’t actually superheroes. I’m not stupid. I just wish for it to take as long as possible. And when it happens, I wish we could at least have a couple of Sunday afternoons together, you and I. Something that’s ours. Something I understand. Because I’m not afraid to say I love you, I’m just so deadly scared of all the rest. Scared of the day when I lose my place in your life. You don’t have to like football. I’m just trying to let you know that I’m really terrified of what things will be like if you don’t. That feeling of being left out. The awkwardness. The loneliness. Mine.

Not NOW, no! But it only takes a second! They come out of nowhere, the bastards!

When you said he was on ‘paternity leave’, did you mean with kids or with the Vietcong?

Because people like stuff. New stuff. Even newer stuff. Stuff to replace old stuff with and old stuff that is so old it becomes retro stuff and starts being used instead of new stuff. Let me tell you: it’s fun stuff.

So let me just make it really clear that I’m not angry at this someone for scratching the car. The car’s just stuff. And we can never allow stuff to become more important than people. Like you. I mean, I’ve thrown away all my best stuff to make room for your stuff. Because your stuff is more important. And my God, you have a lot of stuff.

So it’s without superpowers that you come home from the hospital with your newborn child and feel utterly abandoned and terrified. You look at the hospital staff as they discharge you from the maternity ward like they’re leaving you to die in the desert. Like they’re refusing to open the door to that village of survivors at the end of I Am Legend and just letting the zombies catch up to you.

They don’t stop for directions. They don’t ask for help. They never argue about money, only about principles. They’ll never understand why you would pay anyone to do something you could just as easily do yourself (and their sons will never understand why you would want to do anything all wrong by yourself instead of hiring an expert to begin with, which is actually the cause of almost all of our inter-generational conflicts). They’re a different breed, pure and simple. They know how an extension cord works. You can wake them up in the middle of the night and they’ll tell you today’s mortgage interest rate down to the decimal point. No matter what you buy, they’ll look at you with disappointment in their eyes and ask you what it cost. And though you’ll lie and lower the price by 20 per cent, they’ll still say, ‘$29.95?! They TRICKED you! I know a place where you could’ve gotten it for …’

Because it’s quite possible that the men from your grandfathers’ generation made a mistake or two in their own parenting when my generation was young. But if that’s the case, they’re making up for it now by covering over the cracks and faults in ours. So it’s not easy to teach you what a man is. Masculinity changes. That’s the whole idea.

But I’m trying to learn. And I hope you’ll know more than I did. That you’ll never fear justice. Never misinterpret the fight for equality as a war between the sexes. That you’ll never believe that a woman doesn’t deserve the same rights or freedoms or chances that you do. I hope you’ll know that, above all, most people are not looking for special treatment, most people don’t want everything to be the same for everyone, most people just want things to be FAIR for everyone. I hope you’ll get that, way faster than I did. And I hope that you’ll never get it into your head that just because a woman deserves every opportunity you do, you have to stop holding the door open for her when you can. That you’ll never think it’s impossible to be equals and behave like a gentleman at the same time. Because, as your grandmothers will teach you, that’s rubbish.

So … it’s not easy to teach you what a man is. It’s different things for different people. With different people.

It took me a good few years into my twenties to realize that real men can also stay seated, shut up, and listen.

And never let the terms of masculinity be dictated by someone who thinks it’s bound up with sexuality.

I want you to always remember that you can become whatever you want to become, but that’s nowhere near as important as knowing that you can be exactly who you are.

Because the only thing you can give to men who already have everything is a second chance. And you’re all of their second chances. Every day. They’re tough and they’re proud. They make mistakes and they have faults. But all the best things I know about being a man are things I’ve learned from them. And they became different men when you arrived. Better men. We all did.

So: I will never tell you whether you should be religious or not. Or even if you should believe in God. That’s a thing between God and you, or not. As long as you are kind to your mother and don’t murder or steal or start supporting Manchester City or any other horrible thing like that, I genuinely don’t care whether your moral compass is shaped by an old book or a box of jam doughnuts.

the stuff people remember from their childhood, they really are the strangest of things.

‘Have kids,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said. Yeah, fun like trying to calm down a flock of panic-stricken antelopes using a stroboscope.

Sometimes, when I was quite small, your grandpa and I would go out in the car together. Round, round, round we would drive. I don’t really know where we were going. Things needed picking up. Things needed dropping off. We never said all that much. We probably didn’t even talk much at all when I was small, your grandpa and I. And when I got older, I used to think those car trips must have been incredibly boring. We just sat there next to one another in silence and drove, you know? It was not until after you were born that I realized those were probably some of the very best moments of my childhood, for both me and your grandpa. Because they were ours. And when you’re all grown up, I guess it’ll be the memory of nights like this that I’ll hold most dear. I won’t remember the headaches and the swearing then. I’ll remember the trains. I’ll remember when you worked out how to open the freezer and sat inside your play tent throwing ice cubes at me when I tried to get you into bed. How you made me laugh so hard that my very bones sang when you wanted me to chase you, and we ran through the entire apartment and ended up with you hiding inside a suitcase in the wardrobe having no idea how to get back out again. And then, when I set you free, you dropped an ice cube inside my T-shirt for the very first time. Your expression then. That laugh. That’s what I’ll remember. Those hours were ours. And Raffe. The things you remember from a childhood. They really are the strangest of things.

Because if there’s just one thing I really wish I could teach you, it’s to be kind. To not be a jerk. And you can trust me on this particular subject, because I have very extensive experience of being a jerk. I’ve got a PhD in behaving like an ass.

And at some point in time, in a playground or in an office with panoramic windows at an advertising agency, I hope you’ll realize that the brave person isn’t the one who starts a fight even though he doesn’t know whether he’ll win or lose. The brave person is the one who knows he would win and still holds back.

Never keep your mouth shut. Don’t look away. Never be mean just because you can be. Never mistake kindness for weakness. Don’t become the kind of person who stands in an office with panoramic windows in an advertising firm and thinks that ‘nice’ is an insult.

So, son, let me explain to you that all this that you see around you right now is called ‘life’. It’s going to be complicated at times and it’s going to demand certain things of you. You’ll need to be honest and brave and just. Love and be loved. Fail. Embarrass yourself. Triumph. Fall from something. Fall for someone.

A best friend is good to have. There aren’t really any fundamental requirements for that, of course. But since we’re already on the subject, let’s establish a few all the same: A real friend won’t steal your crush. A real friend won’t ninja loot your warrior in World of Warcraft. Yeah, that’s basically it.

Or you could have one like Goose in Top Gun. Although he dies. And that’s honestly a terrible character trait in a best friend. If I’d had the chance to choose, I probably would have gone for someone like Samwise Gamgee.

And, to be completely honest, it actually doesn’t even need to be a band. It could be a football team we’ll never get around to starting or a bar we’ll never buy or a perfect bank robbery we’ll never carry out.

Sometimes, it’s just nice to go to a place where people care about a good T-shirt, that’s all. So you need a best friend. Someone who knows who you were when you were fifteen. Someone you don’t need to explain everything to. Someone you can drink whisky and lie with. Someone you can call up and say, ‘Want to watch the game tonight?’ Or ‘I was thinking of test-driving a car over the weekend, want to come along and finish all of my sentences with that’s what SHE said!?’

That’s why you need a band. Just so you have a reason once in a while to meet down in the recording studio (or ‘our friend Jimmie’s mum’s garage’ in layman’s terms). Not because the music itself is so important. But because all the rest of it is.

I just want you to know you’ll need something in your life that’s never going to change. So you’ll need a band. If for nothing else than to be able to call them and say, ‘How’s the new MacBook?’ or ‘What the hell are A.C. Milan doing?’ or ‘Want to come over for a barbecue?’ without them getting hung up on details like it being November and you living in an apartment. Or for asking for help moving a couch. Or for swallowing hard and whispering, ‘She said yes.’

When I dropped E off outside his house that evening, we hugged. I can only remember us doing that once before. The day after you were born. You weighed two pounds less than that burger. So you’ll need best friends. Frodo knew that. Han Solo knew that. He-Man and Maverick knew that. You need someone you can call when you need help moving that bloody bookcase. Or someone you can say, ‘They should play Zlatan Ibrahimović in more of a drop-back position,’ to or, ‘Have you found a good stream for the new Game of Thrones episode?’ Or ‘I’m going to be a dad.’ You’ll need a band.

I don’t know all that much about love, if I’m completely honest.

I mean that I love you as though you were a runaway freight train thundering through every cell in my body. I mean that this love didn’t grow on me, it knocked me over. It’s an ongoing state of emergency.

I don’t actually know anything she loves doing as much as she loves dancing, and I can’t find the rhythm in a clock. People have said lots of things about us, but trust me, no one has ever said that we were destined for each other.

So I don’t know what to tell you about love. Maybe that some people say you need to know yourself before you can know anyone else. That could be true. I’ve put a great deal of time into getting to know myself, and that’s given me a whole load of valuable insights.