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Fathers are so last century
YOU know what, I used to be cool. Or at least I think I was. I used to spend my nights in clubs and spend my days lazing around, recovering from nights in clubs.
When it came to music I could sort the wheat from the chaff just from listening to a band's debut single – I knew, just knew, whether they were the real deal or a bunch of chancers from their first three minutes of mayhem.
I used to write and edit the music pages on a daily paper and any record I wanted was just a phone call to the band's record company away – and the next day a promo copy of, for example, Oasis' first record would land on my desk.
Everything was there for the taking and I took everything I could get my hands on. I was a walking encyclopedia of music and was paid (enough to move out of home and rent my own place) to give my opinions on it. I was on first-name terms with every club owner in town and I knew all the singers, drummers, guitarists and bass players of every band who played in them.
Yep, I thought I was the dog's b******s, I was never wrong and I didn't mind telling people either.
If I sounded like an insufferable pain in the jacksie then I probably was, but my God I thought I was cool.
Am I cool now? Am I balls. This is how uncool I am in the eyes of my young daughters. When they have their friends round to play I am an embarrassment to them. All they want me to do is keep out of their way, and whatever I do I mustn't engage in conversations with their friends for fear of showing them up. They think of me as a mad, elderly relative who's been locked in the attic for 20 years.
One morning on the way to school just before their two-week break I noisily mimicked our eight-year-old wailing about God knows what, and do you know what she said? Do you know what she hissed through gritted teeth as we approached the lollipop man? She said: "Stop it, dad. You're embarrassing me."
I know that, eventually, we all turn into our parents and there's nothing we can do about it, but I thought I had a good few years before that happened.
So when do you 'have it' and when do you 'lose it'? Is it when you get your first proper job? Is it when you buy your first house? Is it when the first bill with your name on it pops through your letterbox? Is it when teenage girls stop looking at you in the street? Is it when your missus pops out your first sprog?
I dunno. I lost it so long ago I can't even remember what it looked like – and as far as our kids are concerned I never had it in the first place.
But, then again, they have a far greater capacity to heap shame and
embarrassment on us without even trying. Our five-year-old dropped us right in it last week when we were looking at recent wedding photographs with a family member whose identity I'll keep secret to save them any further pain.
Everyone in the pictures was dressed to the nines and looking about as good as they were ever going to get, when the little 'un looked at their relative and asked: "Why have you got a big, round tummy on those photographs?"
There followed a silence which lasted for several days. Nobody knew where to look. Nobody knew what to say. Somebody had to say something and that somebody was the recipient of our youngest's brutal honesty. "I've lost nineteen and a half pounds since New Year," they huffily harrumphed. And I suspect they're about to lose a bit more very soon.
As social faux pas go it was up there with a mate of mine who, while chowing down at the buffet at a kids' party a couple of years ago, asked one of the mums when her baby was due. The only trouble was she wasn't pregnant. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
But our heart-in-the-mouth moments are becoming more frequent the older our kids get. We let them play in the street in front of our house with their friends now and again because you can't wrap them in cotton wool for ever, sooner or later they'll want to walk to school with their mates and the only way they'll get streetwise is by playing on the streets – even if one of us has always got an eye on them.
Anyway, the most recent heart-stopping moment came at our youngest's friend's party at a local indoor play area last Saturday.
I took her shoes and jacket off her as soon as we got there, I ordered a coffee, stuck my headphones on and read a tacky celeb mag until the party was over.
The trouble was, once it had finished there was no sign of my daughter.
I had a good look around, called her name, but there was nothing. Then I saw the gaping hole where I'd put her little pink trainers and denim jacket 90 minutes earlier. What had been an inconvenience 30 seconds ago was now deadly serious. No sign of my little girl and no sign of her clothes. Panic. Blind panic.
You know what goes through your head in moments like that? Nothing, because reality just stops.
Luckily one of my wife's friends was in the building, and she'd seen my daughter go into the nearby courtyard with her mates and one of the parents to stroke some of the farm animals they keep there.
She told me later how she saw the colour drain from my face as the reality hit home that my kid had vanished.
Thank God she was 10 yards away. Thank God the play area has a strict entry/exit system. Thank God my wife's mate had been watching a lot more carefully than me. Thank God there was a happy ending, because the alternative was unthinkable.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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