The Things We Do For Love

I love my Mum and Dad. I really do.

There are two things I hate, though.

One is self-centredness. Self-absorbed, self-obsessed, selfish. All self, self, self. I can’t stand that.

The other thing I can’t stand is anyone who thinks that they are more important than I am.

My parents must have loved me. It’s not hard for me to say that, when I think of all the things they have done for me – when I stop to consider all of it. It’s just that – just sometimes – it feels a bit like they were doing it for themselves as well. You know? Like they were showing off, sometimes.

Take the school they got me into. I mean I would have been happy going to the one just down the road – well, not happy exactly, but it would have been a shorter way to go to get there and shorter trip getting home at the end of the day when you’re tired. None of that tedious long journey, travelling about. And I would have been with my friends, I suppose. I can’t remember now what friends I had at that age when I moved up a school, but they certainly didn’t go to my new school. I had no friends there and the place was absolutely horrid.

Then there was all the faff of getting there. It was this posh place my Mum and Dad had got me into but it was a long way from home. There was no real way for me to get there. That is, apart from either getting a bus or possibly cycling, and I didn’t have a bike. My parents would probably have got me a bike if I’d wanted one, but that’s the point – I didn’t want one. All that peddling? Not likely! Not for me.

So my Mum used to do the school run in this car she forked out for. I didn’t mind been driven to school, it was quite handy in a way. But when you got there and all the other kids are spilling out of Beamers and Mercs and your Mum drops you off in a Fiat 127, well!… All the other kids are yelling out “Rust-bucket” as your feet hit the pavement and, as if that wasn’t enough, your Mum plants a smacker on you that has all of them howling with laughter at your expense and you spend the rest of the morning trying to rub lipstick off your cheek.

I know she and Dad must have struggled to pay for the car and all the other stuff – the uniform, the sports gear – as if I was ever going to get into sports, for crying out loud – because she took a part-time job at the local laundrette just to help us “get by,” as she put it, while Dad took on week-end shifts at the Co-operative Funeral Directors so that he could chip in a bit extra too. This meant he wasn’t around at week-ends during most of my growing up so he couldn’t take me to football matches and that. Not that I’d be seen dead at a football match but it would have been nice to have been given the option. But, no, my Dad thought he was better off lining his pockets with a few bob. And it’s amazing how many people decide to die just coming up to the week-end, so he was always busy. See what I mean about people being inconsiderate? Selfish sods.

You might think all this hard-work ethic would at least have been applauded by the bunch of chinless wonders I shared a classroom with, seeing as they were all so into the money side of things, but, no, all they could do was have a go at me about it – like it was my fault, which it wasn’t. “Of course, my Daddy drives me to school in the company car – if your father did that you’d have to come in a hearse.” That was what Gerald Latimer said. I wish I’d never told him Dad was in futures and derivatives now. “I suppose he is… if eternal rest’s a future.” Charmless bunch of nerks, always having a go at me, as if it was my fault, which it wasn’t. All because that one time, Dad dropped me off in the works van with the lettering on the side. “How novel – a car with subtitles.” That was Gerald again. Everybody always embarrassing me.

And then they found out that Mum worked at the laundrette when Gerald’s Mum dropped something off there. I don’t even know how she recognised my Mum. I mean, if she’d put on a uniform or worn a disguise I might have got away with it. I think she must have blabbed. That’s the sort of thing she would do, my Mum – “I may work in a laundrette but my little boy goes to St Barnabus’s.” She’d do that sort of thing, my Mum. All because it made her look good. No consideration for me.

And boy did I pay for it. For years there was this joke going around the school, years. “What’s the difference between Jimmy’s Mum and Jimmy’s Dad?” “Oh, I don’t know, what is the difference?” “One stiffens the collars, the other collars the stiff’uns!” I mean you just can’t live something like that down.

Not unless you’ve got something major to hit back with.

It was a little while in coming and, in the meantime, there were various other indignities I had to contend with. Thanks to my parents. Thanks, Mum, thanks, Dad. There were various out-of-school things going on set up by St Barmy’s. They claimed it was all part of giving us a “rounded education.” I’m not quite sure what this was supposed to mean, exactly. To me, “round” is a description for a ball, and if they meant they wanted to teach us a load of balls, I’d say they were doing that already. They also said it was the kind of education that “money just can’t buy,” which was funny because all of these things seemed to cost quite a lot of money, actually. Things like skiing holidays and trips abroad or to see shows in big city theatres or “nature weekends,” whatever the hell they are. Not the sort of stuff I could give a fish’s tit for really, but I couldn’t go anyway because my parents’ cash just didn’t “run to such things,” as they put it. And that was the real problem – not going away when everyone else did. Staying behind and getting the heaps of mockery that can only be provided by the witless twats with more money than brain-cells that I shared lesson-time with. God, it was embarrassing. And it wasn’t my fault.

And then came that fateful day. The day everything changed.

It’s a day I can never forget for reasons I can never remember. I think we were going to be allowed the afternoon off lessons to watch some special thing that was happening on the tele. Some royal wedding or a space-launch or something – anyway something I could safely sleep through, and not worry about the homework I hadn’t done for history or whatever it was I was worrying about. There was always something disturbing my peace of mind at that place. No wonder they called it St. Barmy’s. So I was not best pleased when a teacher pulled me out and said there was some awful news. Give me a break.

What this news turned out to be was that my parents, both of them, had set off in my mother’s car to collect the weekly groceries or whatever, when a 32 tonne truck making a delivery to Ikea had gone out of control and run them over…

“I bet they’re a flat-pack now,” said Gerald Latimer.

It wasn’t totally bad – I did get back to the TV lounge before the thing on tele ended. But this was only after I was asked about a million times was I OK and did I feel alright and that they had sent for a “Grief Counsellor.” I thought that was just as well considering the amount of grief I was getting off them. And they arranged for me to stay in a hotel that evening and I couldn’t help thinking, “You flash gits – anything to show off.”

But that was it really. I stayed in the hotel for a couple of weeks or so before I got an “emergency placement” – I don’t what the emergency was, there was no hurry as far as I was concerned – with the “specialist” foster parents, Jill and Ben – I was never really sure which was which as they both wore chunky sweaters and I thought I was stopping with a pair of lesbians. But the jokes about my real parents all stopped and that was a relief. And there was never any problem sending me on all these outings – which, as I said, I wasn’t that bothered about – but it put a lid on all the “oiks-like-you-can’t-go” derision I’d had to contend with hitherto – and I did get to avoid a lot of classes. And there was a surprising amount of cash that turned up for me from some insurance policy or something my parents had been shelling out for all this time – perhaps that was why they couldn’t afford to keep me properly.

But – biggest joy of all – every Christmas from then on, I got to go on the special orphans’ holiday. This was something that St. Barmy’s arranged for all those kids who had been careless enough to mislay their parents somewhere. It was always some place nice, there weren’t that many of us and we all got on well – perhaps because we had things in common – and they always stuffed us full of food and sweets and we got loads of presents. It was always a really good do. But the biggest part of this biggest joy of all was the sheer, green-with-envy industrial grade resentment I got from my fellow pupils, because none of them, still being en famille, could go. Short of bending over and dropping my pants at them, there was nothing better I could do stick it to them right where it hurt – in their jealous, avaricious pride. That was sweet.

And it wasn’t as if was my fault, because it wasn’t. It was all down to my parents really. All their doing. Thanks, Mum, thanks Dad.

I love my Mum and Dad. I really do.

THE END.