Embarrassment of Riches

This blog would work better if one email of my children was called Rich.

I often tell people that I'm "unembarrassable", partly because I have only a tenuous grip on the English language, and partly because of my father. My Dad was very keen on winding up his children in whatever manner he could. Making any kind of verbal blunder in front of Dad would inevitably result in being reminded of this for the rest of your life, in public. For instance, I once tried to ask the question; "How many of the ten commandments are negative?" and instead (because God hates me) the words that came tumbling out of my mouth were; "How many commandments are there in the ten commandments?"

This question has fallen into family lore. In fact, he reminded me of this faux pas during my graduation ceremony from university. In Southwark Cathedral - at the lectern. Via a microphone.

If it wasn't the fruits of the vacuum between my ears, then it was anything he thought of that would amuse him. One particular favourite was intentionally calling my girlfriend by the wrong name.

"You must be Clare."

"Daaad."

"Not Clare? Janet?"

"Knock it off, dad. You're not funny."

"Julian?" 

Due to this I have found myself fundamentally unfazed by, for instance, knocking myself unconscious on a six foot phallus in the sex museum in Amsterdam. Or tripping up and falling head first into a toilet at work.

This was all fine and dandy until I had kids. A few weeks back I picked the Boy up from his dodgeball class. He was clearly quite cheery as I walked around the school hall retrieving his school clothes from the floor, the roof, behind his ears, and the other assorted locations he'd strewn them. As we walked out of the door he showed me the paper chatterbox he'd made. You remember them, they look like this;

"Pick a colour, dad."

"Blue."

"Pee. Eye. En. Kay... Pick a number.

"I said 'blue'."

"That's not a number."

"No..." *sigh* "Eight."

"One...two...three...four...five..."

"I said 'eight'"

"It says; 'You are sexy.'"

He managed to say this, just as we were passing the headteacher, who paused for a moment and gave me a quizzical expression.

"Uh. I don't think that's a word that you should be using."

"Why? Aren't you sexy?"

"No... I mean... well, actually no. But..."

"Is Grandma sexy?"

"Will you, for the love of God, shut up?"

Sometimes it's like being haunted by the spirit of my Dad. The Girl doesn't do this sort of thing. She goes for another kind of embarrassing.

"Dad?"

"Yes."

"I didn't get to the toilet on time."

"Oh, no! Have you wet yourself?"

"No."

"Oh, good."

"I did a poo."

However, the award for maximum dadbarrassment has to go to the Boy at yesterday's swimming lesson. After the lesson had finished he went under the showers and, just as I was walking into the changing rooms with him he clutched his winkle and yelled;

"Ooh! I need a wee!"

And he ran away, still holding his winkle. I sighed and went into the changing rooms, sat down and waited. And waited.

And waited.

After about ten minutes it started to dawn on me that I was the only person in the room without a child. That I was, in the eyes of the other parents, a grey haired man with "the look", sitting on his own in a kids changing room. This started to attract looks of suspicion. After a few more minutes the other parents were holding towels around their kids and looking at me as if I was something they'd trod in. This became a little uncomfortable, so as a defence mechanism I put my hand in my pocket and reached for my phone, and stopped when one woman saw what I was doing and her eyes went as wide as saucers.

It was at this precise moment that the Boy strode into the changing rooms, completely naked and twirling his soaking wet swimming trunks around his head. For the first time in his life, he appeared to have a moment of clarity, and became aware of his surroundings. He looked first at me, then at the woman who had been looking at me (now aghast), then dropped his trunks, wiggled his hips so his bits jiggled and went;

"WOO!"