Ways in which I’ve humiliated myself in front of my son

Part one of what I’m sure will be many as he’s only five.

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I’m not someone with a lot of phobias. Romanesco broccoli is one. I can’t even look at this vegetable which looks like it’s done too many psychedelics. And this is definitely not something that once dabbled in acid, like perhaps the cauliflower. It’s gone totally overboard and lost its mind and I feel anxious just thinking about it.

My other irrational fear is getting insects stuck in my hair. I’m not massively afraid of insects otherwise. Although I’m not keen on a daddy longlegs. I’m haunted by once seeing a brick wall pulsating with thousands of mating daddy longlegs. It was basically an orgy and if they’d also been post-coitally snacking on Romanesco broccoli I may have had to lobotomise myself on the spot. And let’s face it, the babyish name daddy longlegs would be enough for my hatred. It’d be like calling giraffes mummy longnecks. And I’m sorry but those legs aren’t even that long. They’re not Cindy Crawford long. It's kind of braggy.

I’ve really gone off on some unexpected tangents there. Sorry. What I want to say is that I freak out at the thought of getting insects in my hair. Particularly spiders and daddy longlegs. I don’t know where this fear comes from and to my knowledge, it’s never actually ever happened to me.

That’s the (overly-long) background. Now I’ll set the scene. I was in the garden with my son on a Sunday morning. Okay, that’s enough scene setting. Here’s the inciting incident. My son said to me some terrible words. Worse than when he said, “When you die I’m going to laugh” and “Mummy I’m going to get a sword and cut your tummy open and take all the big bones out”.

He said, ”Oh mummy you’ve got a spider in your hair.”

Now I know I’ve got this phobia but if I’d been asked earlier how I’d react in this situation with my five-year-old I would’ve said with confidence that I’d inwardly panic, obviously, but then calmly thank him for telling me, then go out of sight and massively panic. Throw my head upside down. Shake it vigorously, just to a point before some kind of brain damage. This kind of thing.

This is not what happened. He said, “Oh, mummy there’s a spider in your hair” and I threw my head upside down, then screamed at my son, “Get it off me! Get it off me!” like he was Dwayne Johnson or Jason Statham or anyone other than a five-year-old boy.

I’ll tell you what he didn’t do. He didn’t get it off me. I won’t forget that. Instead, he added the frankly terrifying detail that the spider was turquoise. Which made me panic even more as this was clearly some kind of exotic, poisonous spider and we do buy a lot of bananas so this would make sense.

What made it worse was that we were in the front garden. So it was kind of public and I was kind of loud. I’ve probably traumatised my son and made him feel unsafe around me and like he needs to look after me. And worse still, everyone on my street knows.

I’ve since Googled turquoise spider and none appear to exist so it’s either extraordinarily rare or he made it up to terrify me further. This makes me worry we’re not far off him refusing to eat anything but Romanesco broccoli. But at least he hasn’t cut my stomach open and taken the big bones out.

A year or so earlier there was another incident where I humiliated myself in front of my child. We were at an underground station and had one of those horrendously frustrating, unforgivably long waits for the next tube train. Ten minutes. And by the middle of that ten minutes, my son was getting bored and acting up and kept running too close to the edge of the platform for my liking. By which I mean about three metres from the edge. I tried distraction (great parent!) and telling him off (normal parent!) but he just got worse. I was wondering what I could do next that didn’t involve putting him in the prone restraint when I saw some British Transport Police coming through the barriers.

So I did what anybody would do. Anybody. I quietly said to my son, “Oh look, here are the police. They’ve come to tell you off.” We’ve all done it! Haven’t we? Haven’t we?

There were two policemen. One was older, probably early sixties. The other was a lot younger. And even though I had spoken quietly, they’d heard. I know they’d heard as the older one, ignoring me, looked at my son and said, “Don’t listen to your mummy. We hate it when they do that. As it makes you scared of the police when we’re here to help.”

I’d been parent shamed by the police! And all I wanted to do now, and this was bad of me and apologies to any police, but all I wanted to do now was cry, “Help?! Oh right, well how much did DI Matthew Cottan, DS Ian Buckles and Constable Ryan Pilkington help?” But I’d just have been listing bent coppers from Line of Duty so it wouldn’t have massively helped my cause.

So now in terms of respect, my son sees me as below the police and an imaginary turquoise spider. Which is probably where I belong in the grand scheme of things.