"Hey love how was your day?" Keirans mum asks him before she let's out a large groan as she puts several heavy bags of shopping down on the kitchen floor.
"Oh you know?" He responds answering in that way teenagers do that doesn't provide any answer at all which then annoys parents the world over and leaves them wishing that they hadn't bothered to ask at all.
"No I don't know which is why I asked!" His mother replies bluntly, fed up of this daily ritual after a hard day's work.
"Sorry," was the single one word reply not even bothering to look up from the phone in his hand which was currently winning the war for his attention. She's learned not to bother to tell him to put it down and listen. It really isn't worth the aggravation. Instead she leads with "Mrs Allen said you were late home."
That got his attention. He looks up from his phone, annoyance written all over his face "Fucking Mrs Allen…"
"KIERAN MICHAEL O'DONOVAN!" His mum barks at him stopping him mid sentence. You always know you're in trouble when your name gets trotted out in full. "What have I told you about swearing?"
"But Mrs Allen should mind her own fu…" Keiran manages to self censor himself "...mind her own business. What does she have over there a spreadsheet that she fills in of all the neighbours' times coming and going? Doesn't she have anything better to do?"
"She probably does yes and in answer to the second point apparently not because she was straight over when I pulled up in the car to tell me. Don't change the subject, why were you late home?"
Keirans puffs out his cheeks, partly in annoyance at Mrs Allen, partly at the reason he was late home and partly because he's a teenage boy and huffing and puffing is as much a part of puberty as everything else, it's an age old right of passage. OOnce he's finished puffing he shakes his head.
"Well…go on!" His mum instructs him.
"I erm had detention."
"Ohhhh Keeeeiran," she says with the long drawn out use of his name singularly this time, marked in turn by that all too familiar tone of disappointment. He much preferred the anger to the disappointment it was easier to deal with.
"It wasn't my fault mum!" He tells her with an air of protest to his voice now.
"Go on then try me," she tells him, taking on the role of judge and jury.
In his mind he'd been punished once for his perceived crime, this part always felt highly unnecessary and well frankly downright mean. You shouldn't be punished twice for one crime, it certainly wouldn't happen in the legal courts he'd made a point of checking it the last time he felt it had been unfair and resulted in detention at school and being grounded with no pocket money.
"Promise not to get cross…or laugh."
The second part stoked her curiosity. She was about to launch into her standard reply of how can I promise not to get cross if I don't know what you've done but the second part caught her off guard. So instead she told him to "Put the kettle on and make your old mum a cup of tea and then you can tell me why."
His head lurches back and snaps back down followed by the eye roll. He forces his chair back across the laminate flooring, a horrible screeching sound ensues which results in her rolling her eyes. At least he knows where he gets it from. However he does as he's told and makes them both a cup of tea whilst she gets on with the job of putting the shopping away in the fridge and the cupboards. He briefly thinks about taking his tea into the front room or up to his bedroom to test if she's forgotten. By some minor miracle she might have done, but he rightly surmised that it would be highly unlikely. He does however reason that this time she's likely to see the funny side and maybe he won't receive a second punishment after all. He'll take his chances.
They both sit down at the kitchen table, their requisite assigned tasks now complete.
"So then," she says.
"Hmmmmm," he says thinking about where to start. Then nothing but silence between the two of them.
Finally she breaks it. "We can sit here all night. No dinner…and … don't you be criticising my cooking you cheeky bugger and say good."
That makes them both laugh. Breaks the ice if nothing else. Here goes nothing he thinks to himself. "Mr Simpson told me off for laughing in sociology."
"OK and what were you laughing about?"
"Well I'd have told you if you hadn't interrupted me story. Jesus."
"You left a silence."
"I was thinking of my next words."
She says nothing, just raises her eyebrows and tilts her head to one side. Not so much a look that says get on with it then, more a look that says I call bullshit.
"He wanted to know if we'd ever been giving any great advice by either our parents or our grandparents and my first thought was of your mammy."
Oh no she thought to herself and started to giggle.
"SEE!" He says point proven already, case dismissed.
"Is this about your Mickey?"
The blush that appears on his face confirms that answer. He sighs.
"Yep! That was the first thing that came into my head and I laughed and he said something you'd care to share with the class Mr O'Donovan? and I said no Sir, sorry Sir and he said OK Well no more of your silliness then, does anyone have something positive to share unlike Mr O'Donovan here?"
"So how did you end up with detention?" She asks probably quite rightly as well.
"I laughed again."
"Oh dear. Did you remember something else mammy told you?"
"Yep!"
"Oh bugger. Jaysus she was great craic wasn't she but I couldn't leave you alone in a room with her for five minutes." There it was mum's Irish upbringing flooding out of her. Despite all those decades living in England you could take the girl out of Ireland but you couldn't take Ireland out of the girl.
"What else did you remember other than her telling you not to play with your mickey cause it would fall off and you believing her and keep asking me for months after was it going to fall off?"
"You don't want to know!"
"No you're probably right. The problem with you kids when you're little is you're like sponges and parrots combined. It took me months to get you to stop saying feck when you were about two."
"You've never told me that," he says.
"Good job too, otherwise you'd have had double detention." That made them both laugh.
"Do you really want to know?"
"No, but tell me all the same, it will give me something to tell the girls about over coffee at work tomorrow."
He looks aghast.
"I'm joking!" She tells him. She's not though, she's lying. She'll tell them everything about this conversation and it'll get them through the boredom of another work day.
"Do you remember her thing about girls wearing big gold hoop earrings?"
She looks puzzled at him. If she does she's clearly forgotten it whereas he hasn't.
In the perfect tone of his now dearly departed granny he mimics "now don't use be riding no mots wearing those big gauld earrings when you grow up boyo!"
He didn't have a clue what it meant as a small boy in fairness but he'd heard it often enough when his mum was out of earshot that it had tattoo'd itself into his memory. Thankfully for Keiran he was a child of the Google age and had finally found out what riding and mots were though he never found out why you shouldn't shag girls who wore great big gold earrings. His mum didn't find that one as amusing. In fact she didn't laugh at all.
"Oh," was all she said at first and then after a long pause added "And that made you laugh?" For good measure.
"Well no not especially, but then I looked to my right and Daisy was tucking her hair behind her ear and she had these whopping great gold earrings in and I did a what do they call it? An involuntary laugh. Like really loudly. At that point Mr Simpson loses his shit at me and sent me out the class and later gave me detention. Sorry mum, I couldn't help it. It's not my fault I didn't get taught any normal advice growing up like the other kids."
Well with my mammy I suppose he's got a point she thought to herself and got up and walked out of the room and chuckled to herself trying not to be heard as she went to go upstairs and slip into something more comfortable. She didn't even tell him off for using the word shit. Sometimes the best weapon a parent has in their armoury is silence and to leave them guessing.
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