IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:Most men would prefer to eat their own tongue than talk about sex to their children, writes Adam Brophy
WE'RE DRIVING along, calmly taking in the view, going nowhere in any particular hurry. The elder has her schoolmate in the back with her.
She asks her mother to play track five on the Mamma Mia soundtrack for the sixth time in a row. If I hear any more Abba I'll eat my own tongue, but I still recognise that overdosing on the monarchy of Europop is preferable to whinging kids. The thing is, they seem to be looking for an excuse to row.
The younger is trying to kick the other two from the cossetted height of her seat, then reacting like she's been bitten by a snake if they make any attempt at retribution.
They're not even in bad form; they like nothing better than winding each other up. Throw another variable into the mix in the form of a friend and the niggle increases exponentially.
The elder can win any physical battle, she can insult her sister easily and take her on in direct verbal confrontation. But she lacks her younger sibling's killer instinct, eye for any weakness and unerring accuracy in hitting it.
The younger will gently lean into the elder's space, slowly pressing down until her presence approaches obnoxious. The elder will respond with a yell or possibly a lash out. Either way, the younger will react as if she has been blinded by acid.
When things have calmed, the younger will begin again to edge ever-so-slowly back into her sister's space. She will claim it as her own, going so far as to declare: "I was there first" when she patently wasn't.
This goes on for maybe three rounds. The younger accepts no responsibility for the instigation, the elder none for the response.
The missus snaps; reason is temporarily out the window and threats are made to leave them on the road. Now their combined forces are turned against us.
"Watch out for mum, she has her period," says my seven-year-old daughter.
"What?" says I, only just keeping us out of a ditch.
"Oh, that's been said before," says the missus, looking pointedly at me. "I wonder where she heard it."
Suddenly it's not them against us. Everyone's after me.
"What's her period?" asks the friend.
"It's when she's cranky. Even crankier than usual," says the Oracle.
I don't think congratulating her on her accuracy and insight will go down well. I shut up. For a minute. I have to start speaking because the missus seems to have decided to explain exactly what a period is and I can't bear that. I can barely type that.
I interrupt. "She never heard that from me. Otherwise she would have used a far more juvenile term."
"Really? Well, who else could she have got it from?"
"You, of course. You're always lamenting your weakened physical and emotional state when it hits that time of the . . . that time . . . your thingummy. See, she couldn't have got it from me, I don't even know what phrase to use."
She seems to be digesting this, possibly accepting it. Relief washes over me.
For a minute she had started to talk about a sex-related topic with someone else's child present.
There's no way I'm coping with the fallout from that. No parent is going to thank you for introducing a topic they are more likely than not hoping to bodyswerve forever. I can't be the father at the school gate the other parents point at and whisper, "He's the one. Them in that family, they brought it up. Feckers."
This was never about sex anyway. It was about finding a weak spot and hitting us there. Somehow the elder sensed this would at the very least get a reaction, and quite possibly get us squirming.
She has me wriggling anyway, and the missus going into earnest Earth mother, must be clear and open about all topics with my children. Not on my watch she won't.
No, when it comes down to it I fully intend on being as vague as possible about all things reproductive until either the playground supplies a wild variety of inaccurate information, or their mother finds space to present the facts when I am in a different county.
There's a common misconception that men have difficulty expressing their emotions. Nonsense, we do it all the time, with friends and family. What we cannot do is talk about the practicalities of either reproductive organs or the act of sex itself without smirking or attempting to ease our discomfort by kicking a ball against a wall. That's the law.
The kids go back to taunting each other. We let them.
abrophy@irishtimes.com