WE HAD FRIENDS visiting one weekend recently and I had what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience. One moment I was a normal, present and loving parent, and the next, I was watching myself from above as I did something I had always sworn I would never do.

I was telling a story. A hilarious story. A real crowd-pleaser. It involved my younger daughter, and how she accidentally wrote an entire essay in Art on Leonardo Di Caprio instead of Leonardo Da Vinci. She had submitted it, and made her way home from school before realizing, and then immediately burst into flames from the embarrassment of it all. As I finished the story, everybody laughed, including me, and then I turned and made direct eye contact with her.

I hadn’t heard her entering the room and she had a look of utter betrayal on her face. This was her embarrassing story, and I had just sold her out for a cheap laugh.

I grew up in a typical Irish household where my parents approached all family visits in what I imagine is the same way as a college fraternity approaches hazing, i.e. with the clear intention of stripping away all dignity from those present. I used to beg my parents before we would visit anyone: ‘please, please don’t tell any stories about me’.

Of course, they’d tut and sigh, say that I was being over sensitive, or dramatic, and then I’d have to sit through another roasting session where the main topic was me, or my........

© TheJournal