Keeping mum

“You didn’t ask,” he shrugged. I have heard this before. The boys often use it as an excuse for not keeping me informed, by making out that any ignorance on my part is obviously all my fault.

They remind me of the conniving imp Rumplestiltskin, in the Grimms’ fairytale, who threatened the queen with losing her baby, unless she could guess his name correctly.

Do they really expect me, like the queen in the story, to pluck ideas from the air in the unlikely event that I might land on the truth at some point?

Where the queen begged of  Rumplestiltskin: “Is it Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar? Shortribs, or Sheepshanks, or Laceleg?” it appears that I am supposed to ask searching questions about everything my boys have been, or are about to, get up to if I am to have any hope of knowing what is going on.

“Did you happen to get a very low mark in a maths test today? An English test, then? A science test? How about a French oral? Perhaps you got into trouble in the dinner queue?”

Or: “Is it the case that you and your friends are planning to go out one night this week? To the cinema? For a pizza? A party? Hanging out and generally getting up to no good in the park?

“And who are you going out with? James? Lewis? Matthew? Sam? Bathazar? Sheepshanks?”

Actually, I know the answer to the last question, because it’s always: ‘People’, followed, after further enquiries, by ‘Just people,’ which narrows it down somewhat: “So I can rule out Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin then ?” (They never do get that ‘unjust’ joke).

I could, of course, follow this through and drive them to despair with endless, searching questions and stabs in the dark: “Well, how am I ever going to find out anything if I don’t ask?” I might say.

But I don’t have to. Because, just like the queen, whose messenger overheard Rumplestiltskin shouting out his name and reported it back to her, I have ways and means.

The boys should realise by now that we parents aren’t as stupid as they think. We are old hands at gathering information. We find things out, we talk to one another, we clear out our sons’ blazer pockets and schoolbags.

I confess that I have even picked up a mobile phone occasionally – thinking it was mine, obviously – and glanced at a few messages, before realising it belonged to one of the boys. Serendipity, I think it’s called.

In this instance, I found out about the concert by accident. Roscoe mistakenly sent me a text saying he needed to be picked up later from school, at 5.30pm.

But this was the time his school’s ‘Man choir’ rehearsal finished, not the concert directly afterwards, which was over at 7pm.

I hadn’t received the panicky second text informing me not come to school until an hour-and-a-half later by the time I arrived in the car park, at 5.25pm.

After 15 minutes waiting, receiving no response from Roscoe as to where he was and what was keeping him, other parents started to arrive.

“What’s happening tonight?” I asked one of them. “It’s a music concert, but I don’t think it’s been widely publicised,” one mum told me, sheepishly. Perhaps she had used some form of subterfuge in order to wheedle out the information. She was wearing a woolly hat, so may have been undercover.

When I found Roscoe, 15 minutes before the concert was due to start, he was horrified: “Don’t you dare stay for it. I’m not going to perform if you do,” he said. “I mean it.”

Given that it takes me 20 minutes to get home, and another 20 minutes to come back again, I had no intention of going anywhere: “Of course I’m going to stay, Roscoe. And besides, I want to hear you sing,” I told him.

“Let me just go and get your younger brother from the car,” I added, which, of course, enraged him further. “Awwhhh. Not him too,” he whined.

The concert was wonderful and uplifting. The boys sang their hearts out, their rich, deep harmonious voices bringing tears to many a parent’s eyes. Every so often, Roscoe would cast a fleeting but sullen scowl at me and his younger brother Albert.

When we collected him at the end, I told him how good it was, and how proud I was of him. “This is why I didn’t want you to come. You’re just so annoying,” he said.

“So, would you rather I told you it was rubbish? Or that it was just OK, nothing special? Or make no comment at all?”

“No, that would be annoying  too,” he said.

I just can’t win.

OF all the lies we tell our children in order to keep them in line, I think this has got to be one of the best: “Thousands of children die from rabies every year. That’s why you can’t have a puppy.” Or does anyone know any better  ones? Please email me on erc46@btinternet.com and tell me more.