Had I not inherited from my father enormous ears that stuck out at right angles from my head, I would have been convinced that I was switched at birth. An introspective, bookish child, I existed in a constant state of mortification at the shenanigans of my ‘accidental’ parents. Yes, accidental for we were accidents as my father delighted in reminding us.
Was it my greatest source of embarrassment that following my 3-month stint as a zimmermädchen in Germany working to save for college, my father would thereafter introduce me as his daughter who ‘can clean 50 jax a day'?’ (toilets in Irish slang) Or was it the ignominy of being ejected from a cemetery after he danced on my grandmother’s grave? Or was it perhaps those times when after breaking open my wardrobe and reading my diary he took to quoting from it?
No! By that time I’d earned the moniker deirdyweirdy and thought myself immune to embarrassment.
It was my mother who gets the accolade for the most humiliating situation in which I ever found myself. And it wasn’t the time she turned up stocious at the door of my classroom, or the night a neighbour came to our door demanding I come and remove her from their abode after she'd peed upon their good sofa. Nor was it when she called the police because she was so drunk I locked her in the house with me.
No! Pride of place goes to that Christmas when I was in the legal services business and held a do in the office for our staff as well as our solicitor and barrister clients. During the party, one of the clients approached me to report that some drunk had wandered in off the street and pissed on the stairs. As I opened the door to the stairwell to investigate, the inebriated figure squatting in her own urine raised her head and could be heard by all as she slurred, “Truuuudy, get your pooor mudder a drink.”
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