You know that thing where you bring up things in your past and even as you’re getting to the good bit in how you car surfed up the main street and were a total legend you can see their little faces registering how maybe, if the house were on fire, they should duck around you in search of their other parent?
Well, now our lot have no-one to lead them to safety because we both, together, with only me a little more to blame than my better three quarters, have lost all credibility with our kids.
And it started out so well intentioned: talking to the kids about money and scammers and how to avoid getting caught.
Someone will come of age where we consider it okay for them to have things like email, Instagram or Facebook, and within hours they’ll come dashing in asking or our credit card because there’s some fantastical offer just come through.
And while these conversations usually go down really well, this time I can even pinpoint the exact moment their faith in our adulting shrivelled up into something like one eighth of a horcrux floundering about on the platform of a white washed Kings Cross Station.
Suddenly, you see, I remembered something I hadn’t thought about for over a decade.
“We once invested in pirate treasure,” I ended what was an otherwise very sensible few sentences with.
“You what now?” asked Miss13.
Smiling, I glanced over at Tracey who for some reason had her eyes shut and seemed to have stopped breathing.
“Dad,” Miss8 pipped in. “You did not.”
Yep, even to someone whose life experience could be measured in single digits this sounded ludicrous.
“No, no, it was a thing,” I went on.
The looks we were getting were satisfyingly incredulous. I thought this was going rather well, although I could feel my wife mentally willing one of my socks to leap up, with or without a foot still in it, and fill the hole in my head which was destroying the years of work she’d put into pretending she was sensible.
“Pirate treasure was a thing?” Master15 wanted to know, although from his tone he would require evidence and someone in the house better be sporting a peg leg or he wasn’t buying it.
“Well, it turned out it wasn’t,” I admitted, chuckling, because it was at this moment I realised I’d made a huge mistake. “That would be stupid.” No-one’s face looked surprised although Tracey did open her eyes. “I believe,” I went on, “it was a Portuguese Galleon, wasn’t it Trace?”
She closed her eyes again, either daydreaming about the riches we missed out on or burying me at sea – it could have gone either way.
And it was at this point Master15 summed up our financial literacy/position better than any financial adviser ever has.
“I think,” he said to his sisters, “we’re on our own. I doubt they’ll even need a will.”
Divided by seven it was never going to be a king’s ransom anyway, buddy.
Oh and FYI, I have never car surfed. I do believe that was Tracey and her delinquent friends. Definitely need to remember to bring that up now Miss16 is learning to drive.
Quick Update
A few things have happened lately which I haven’t gotten around to properly doing justice to in a write up (and it’s killing me) so here’s a catch up of life coming out of COV19 lockdown:
1. Despite some doubts amongst family & friends I’m still a councillor (fines $20k to $30k is still available if you want to risk a fiver but jail terms are all taken up to and including life)
2. I’m back in the house after I messaged Tracey’s surgeon, Dr Brown, and explained he’s the only person I trust to give me an honest idea of Tracey’s risks regarding COV19. He wrote back with a whole heap of statistics and the encouraging sentence, ‘I would go as far as saying she has a better chance than the rest of us having seen what she is capable of surviving’
3. We’re still not pregnant. Eight year run now. Enthusiasm in our monthly celebrations doesn’t appear to be wavering
4. We’re finally booked in to fit out an extra loo in the house. She says it’s because we have three teenagers now but I suspect Tracey is just concerned about the chances of a ‘local councillor caught peeing in the yard’ headline
5. Our latest sponsored post is stunningly delicious. Check it out if you want to risk drooling
raising a family on little more than laughs
