“IT’S SO UNFAIR.”
“I didn’t ASK to be born.”
The words of every moody teenager from Tallaght to Timbuktu… Or else what you yourself will be saying after you read this and take your own little trip down scarlet memory lane?
We’ll see.
The only thing more embarrassing than your Dad telling your friends one of his terrible jokes as a teenager was if he got up lepping around the place “dancing”. Bonus puce points if he and your mother did the embarrassing waggling of the heads and shaking of the hips TOGETHER. Tag team of utter morto.
Dad jokes and direly dodgy dancefloor moves at a family wedding aside: there was nothing like the lurch in your young, tender stomach when your mother or father broke into the embarrassing family stories. Or worse, the pictures. My God, the pictures.
“Did you ever hear about the time Fionnuala wet herself during Mass…”
“GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOU- NEVER MIND WHAT I WAS DOING!”
Ah, the immortal line broken out by every Irish Mammy at one stage or another when trying to convince you to do something utterly soul-destroyingly embarrassing like change your clothes in public or run into the sea without your togs.
Hand-me-downs were and are an essential part of Irish family life, but woe betide you if you came last in a clatter of children. That meant not only holey clothes but also woefully un-trendy items of clothing that simply had to be borne – well, until they were invariably passed onto some unfortunate cousin or neighbour.
Only those who were collected mid-disco by a Mam in slippers or a Dad wearing muck-encrusted wellies as your friends looked on in barely-concealed horror will understand this one. The shame… The hot glow of shame… It’s never truly gone away, has it?
Whether it was being barred from attending Feile 1995 despite the fact ALL your mates were going, or being banned from watching Friends (or anything with even a touch of smut), your parents were effectively ruining your life with this one. (And now you’ve gotten a bit older, you suspect they probably enjoyed it just a tad as well.)
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