Dad's in a daze, but the kids are all right

As usual, my son is showing me something he made from LEGO, seeking my imprimatur.

I'm so sick of LEGO.

"What do you mean cling on?" I ask, impatiently.

"You said build a cling-on spaceship, so where do the bits cling on? Under the wings?"

Of course, I meant Klingon, not cling on. He's new to Star Trek.

"The baddies with the funny foreheads," I say.

Still doesn't get it.

Our male child sees something on TV or online, then, savant-like, goes and recasts it in plastic bricks.

He's 28.

Just kidding, he's nine, but his obsession with the Danish super toy is still sort of troubling.

When he's stumped for inspiration, out spurt four little words to chill the blood: "What can I build?"

Advised to fashion anything from the Great Wall of China to a rock, he disappears into a corner of the house we've all but abandoned for a dangerous sea of sharp-edged componentry and, after a few hours of silent industry, returns clutching a not-unimpressive (albeit garish and multi-coloured) sculpture.

"Wow, cool," we say, feigning enthusiasm and praying to God he doesn't mistake this for genuine interest and a signal to sit us down and explain how he was plumb out of long, friction-ridged pins but was able to scavenge a couple of connector hubs at the very last second, saving the entire project while not having to compromise integrity (his or the structure's).

Please shut up.

To give the boy credit, there is something zen and monastic in the way he goes about his business, the way he focuses on the here and now, as if a Buddhist who spends 36 hours constructing (a garish and multi-coloured) mandala, only to rake the exquisite sand pattern into oblivion upon completion.

I leave him to it.

Later, a bit bored, I wander up to our eldest daughter's room for a welfare check (hers, not mine, I think). She's 13, so I knock, begrudgingly, not really sure when this new dilution of my authority was gazetted, but here I am, in the hall, waiting for her permission.

I'm deigned entry with a clipped "Hmm?" and upon opening the door am physically knocked back by a slap of sultry air escaping the small space like a perfumed sirocco.

It's 2pm, her radiator is on, her window is closed, her curtains are drawn and a strip of LEDs slung around the ceiling in a paroxysm of unauthorised interior decoration is throbbing provocative reds, greens and blues, prompting flashbacks to nightclubs I frequented in my 20s; the type that sold watered-down spirits and bathed you in ultraviolet radiation for, regrettably, hours.

The flashback, in turn, sparks visions of Willem Dafoe's drug dealer John LeTour padding around anodyne New York apartments in Paul Schrader's 1992 film Light Sleeper. These days, LeTour is a kindred spirit. Life, once so solid and defined, has slipped from our grasp. We've all been removed from the process; passengers.

MORE B.R. DOHERTY:

Like the rest of the country, our teenager has been spending a lot of time thinking about what unnecessary items she might like to buy online. She's itching to click and collect a lizard but keeps setting her hopes on any foreign invader which would prove detrimental should it find its way into our still relatively naive local wilds.

Given her herpetological ambitions, internet access and sneakiness, I wonder if the primordial atmosphere of her room (humidity, hormones, horrible lighting) isn't some deliberate effort to engineer an environment perfect to facilitate an illegal reptile importation racket and, again, I'm struck by another '90s film, this time Atom Egoyan's Exotica, where a tax man with a tragic secret wallows through an unsavoury world of strip clubs and macaw trafficking.

"Turn the heater off and open the window," I say, before walking away, feeling dazed and icky after my encounter with our own resident exotic species.

Craving something wholesome, I move along to her 12-year-old sister's room. It doesn't yet command a full-blown knock; more of a polite rolling of the knuckles and simultaneous shove of the door, sort of like when you're at least 65 per cent sure the toilet stall you're entering is unoccupied.

As expected, all's in order. Fresh air, natural light and a year 6 pupil at the oversized desk she insisted we haul out of the shed and reassemble in her room because she takes home schooling far more seriously than anyone else in this building hemorrhaging so much Wi-Fi, you can actually see bits of Wi-Fi dribbling out of the house and pooling down the yard (then again, maybe that's our overprescribed septic).

She glances up from her iPad just long enough for me to offer a supportive smile. She grimaces and shoos me away.

Mature as she is, she's not quite old enough to hide when she's stressed. She's competitive and puts too much pressure on herself and I leave with visions of Reese Witherspoon's overachiever Tracy Flick from Alexander Payne's 1999 film Election.

I head into the kitchen to make a coffee or eat something or just loiter somewhere that isn't outside the children's bedrooms. We're out of milk, and fruit and bread and butter and even both types of flour. We were fully stocked just three days ago.

I think of John Schlesinger's 1975 film The Day of the Locust, which has nothing to do with the ravenous insect but does feature a character called Homer Simpson played by Donald Sutherland, which, naturally, leads me to think about the animated Homer Simpson, specifically, when he says: "Aw, I have three kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and three money?"

As another eerie, doppelganger day draws to a close, the kids and I ride to the rec oval. We bat and bowl in the nets and play force 'em back with a reinflated ball. I haven't kicked a footy in about two years and immediately pull a muscle in my abdomen.

On the other side of the deserted oval, an ancient cypress catches the breeze. I watch as the tree seems to shiver and a cloud of pollen (Sap Green on the Boss Ross colour chart) explodes from its branches, rushing towards the escarpment, down where the birds and animals aren't wondering if they're breaking the law by being outside.

I turn to find the kids wrestling on the ground.

We ride home.