sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Parents Can Be Thooo Embarassing
So I was walking home from shul (synagogue) - it's the first day of Succot, Tabernacles - and a friend's pre-teen daughter was in a bit of a strop. "You know how it is," he said to me, "everything's boring. You're boring. Parent's are just embarassing."

While I don't think that anymore, let me relate a story from my own experience. (Aside: don't you hate it when you want someone to listen to you, and they interrupt and say "I had a similar experience in my own life" and start telling it over your story. But then blogs are only interactive to a certain degree. And no one's commented here forever (OK, a day. But this is internet time)). Bugger: too many brackets.

So I'm seventeen, in the lower sixth form at an all girl's school in Manchester (which has all those words in its name) and at parents evening, my Dad gets talking to Mr Blagdon, our economics teacher, about how he'd done a Monopolies and Mergers Commission reference. Mr B immediately invited him in to do a talk to my Economics set.

I was so worried he was going to embarass me, in the way teenagers worry about these things. On the day, I picked out his least embarassing tie (looking back, none of his ties were especially embarassing, in fact they were rather stylish - my Mother is very good at shopping) and we drove off to school. It was first period.

Timetable aside: I never really got why lessons were called periods. Particuarly in a girls school. There's lots of pre- and post- pubescent young women running around talking about what they've got this period, and what they do to avoid boredom in a double period. It can't be good for them.

Anyway, there's about sixteen girls sitting in the sixth form library (no, I still don't know why we had our own library, the books weren't any better), sniggering quietly because it's my Dad. We would have sniggered for anyone's dad, I'm sure.

My Dad starts. "So you all know how a public company works?"

Blank looks all round. Mr Blagdon is eyes to the floor.

"No problem, " my ever-resourceful father says, turning to the blackboard, to draw a diagram.

He writes PUBLIC COMPANY on the board.

Only he misses out the L (I had put him under a lot of performance pressure): P U B I C COMPANY was how it read.

I didn't hear the end of that one for a long, long time.