Shameful Secret

I am a source of towering embarrassment to the Giant Boy. I had been merrily trotting about in the world for many a decade, blithely unaware that my very existence  provoked shame and caused unseemly mirth. It is lucky that I do not give a tuppenny damn,or I should be utterly downcast and stay indoors for ever.

 So we went to see a film. The GB lurked around in thefoyer, lest any of his peer group materialised, and formed a mocking circle around me,saying "Your Mum",or some equally inflammatory witticism.  I was generously allowed to pay.Then he whisked me into the auditorium, checking carefully for people he knew.If he had had a canvas sack with him,it would have been over my head. Like the Elephant Man, I was led, stumbling, to the most remote and empty row. The film began, and darkness shrouded my hideous form, much to his relief.  It was "The Inbetweeners".Entirely reprehensible, devoid of artistic merit,foul, tasteless,and about seventy different sorts of wrong. I laughed like any drain. "Shut up Mum!" he hissed, "your laugh is mad..."

Coming out, I said to him "Well, we WERE lucky that no-one saw me, weren't we? " "Yes", he agreed, sincerely."But someone once saw you on the bus with me...."He trailed off, the unfinished sentence heavy with remembered mortification.

Now,I don't recall finding my parents that dreadfully shamemaking. And they were,in their different ways, rather unusual. I have mentioned my Mother's tree-climbing tendency. She sang operatic arias when she Hoovered.  She got mumps on one side only. Dad was given to keeping bits of bacon in the turn-ups of his trousers,and sometimes wore a hat on holiday. They both had loud, clear, carrying voices.  At eighty-seven, my Mother's yell can still make a dog freeze in mid-defecation. But I think my peer group at that time just sort of shrugged, in a Gallic, world-weary fashion, and assumed that all grown-ups were variously barking, and the least said about them the better.

One of my schoolfriends had a father who was a sex pest, in a feeble way.When we called round for her to walk to school (yes, children, it was THAT long ago..), he would answer the door,still wearing pyjamas,and stand there grinning. Then he would glare at our ( uneventful) fronts, adjust himself,and call her to the door. After a few episodes of this, we simply came to call in groups and stayed firmly at the gate,reasoning that he would either stop it,or get binoculars. Another chum's Mum was a volatile hysteric, and frequently greeted us by sobbing wildly into her apron and embracing us, or suddenly turfing us all out of her kitchen, throwing Jacob's Club biscuits after us,  screaming that she had "Had enough of our insolence!" I don't think any of this was ever discussed.

I honestly haven't done or said anything peculiar in front of the Giant Boy's enormous friends. Yet. But I see great possibilities for blackmail, if he doesn't watch it..