It's been quite an education raising teenage boys, and mornings are the most interesting time of the day! What can I say other than Troglodyte. I visited a beautiful cave in Derbyshire last year, where the last rope-making troglodytes in England lived. It was fascinating to learn about them, but their living conditions defied belief, dark, dank and smelly. They hardly ever emerged from the cave, and ate, slept, worked and raised their families in the mouth of the cave. They even kept livestock with them.
When I tip-toe into my Son's dark, smelly cave to wake him (because his alarm has only managed to wake the rest of the house) I'm reminded of the Troglodytes, who would appear to the outside world to be a strange, primitive, anti-social group. I remind myself, that they were perhaps not well understood, and were in fact an industrious people, who kept themselves to themselves, and quietly went about their business, in their way.
I gently shake my sleeping teen and am met with a deep, thundering growl of 'WHAAAAAAT', so I retreat swiftly from the cave, picking up the dirty laundry as I go. I'm reassured in the knowledge that he's alive, and will no doubt emerge for food at some point.
On reflection, it seems a little unfair to compare my spotty, sweaty, lump of adolescent boy to to such an industrious group of cave dwellers, whose teens were no doubt skilled rope makers and foragers, not just grumpy, smelly, cave dwellers.
The Troglodyte parents had it right!!
–noun
1.
a prehistoric cave dweller.
2.
a person of degraded, primitive, or brutal character.
3.
a person living in seclusion.
4.
a person unacquainted with affairs of the world. 5.
an animal living underground.
