Upfront

‘PARENTS,” SAID the man sitting opposite me over dinner, “they are just so self-righteous. And boring. Self-righteous and boring, all of them, without exception.”

This rant came between the starter – delicious antipasti, hummus, roasted tomatoes, that kind of finger-licking malarkey – and the main course of great slabs of beef, homemade horseradish cream, spuds gratin and carrots. Interesting thing about the carrots – there wasn’t a great demand for them at this particular dinner party. Self-righteous carrots, you could hear people muttering. Boring. A teeny bit of wine had, obviously, been taken.

We were talking about head shops. Ranting man maintained the only reason they were being closed down was because of an overreaction on the part of parents who can’t keep track of their teenagers’ movements and who are worried they might go out and ingest some class of faux bath salt concoction that will land their little darlings in AE.

“This is the thing,” he said. “Nobody asked them to have children. They did it to themselves. And if they can’t keep tabs on their offspring, that’s their own funeral. Why should everyone else have to suffer because they don’t know what little Jeremy is up to at night and they are too busy sitting at home drinking wine in front of Come Dine With Me to find out? Self-righteous, all of them.”

And boring, don’t forget boring. He was exaggerating for general dinner party entertainment purposes, but not much. His main point concerned how people have children and then suddenly change.

“I mean, the way they view the world, society, everything changes. They get this earnest, holier than thou attitude, they think everyone else cares,” he explained. One day head shops are a diverting segment on the 9pm news, the next they are the devil’s work. Even if the research to show how terrible they are is flimsy at best, they must be stopped, razed to the ground, and, for God’s sake, Joe, will somebody think of the children?

I found it highly entertaining. I like listening to people like that because (a) witty extremists make me laugh and (b) it reminds me of how easy it is as a (whisper it) parent to become consumed by parenthood, eaten up by it, swallowed whole. So that at a dinner party, instead of talking about Justin Bieber’s hair and Russell Crowe’s Irish accent you end up monopolising somebody with a story of the time your baby puked over the photographer when they were getting their passport photo taken. Oh, how we laughed.

Before I had children, I was constantly amazed by how people, parents mainly, thought it was normal to talk non-stop about their children and that everyone else should be more than happy to listen. For hours. It’s a bit like limiting conversation to tales of your negative equity or your romance troubles or your interest in early 20th century pottery. Throw in a few Clarice Cliff-related anecdotes sure, but it’s a bit much to expect hand-painted teapots to sustain an entire dinner party’s conversation.

(Disclaimer: Personally, I always found those stories of little people interesting even as a non-parent. But I think I am probably alone there. This is the person who used to bore her school friends with endless tales of her babysitting career. If I wasn’t restrained by the powers that be, this column would be the newspaper equivalent of a creche. Some people would say it already is. But just think how much worse it would be if there wasn’t someone sitting behind me each week telling me what to write. )

I think most normal people – and some normal people are also parents, incredibly – sitting eating their bruschetta on a Saturday night are praying that the anecdote about little Jeremy (he’s getting a hard time here, poor fella), relieving himself in the middle of the Phoenix Park in full view of the deer, will end. And that soon they can get up and move to the other side of the room where people appear to be talking about something that doesn’t make them want to chew their own leg off with boredom. Courtney Love’s argument with her Kindle reader, for example.

When I go out I mostly want to forget I have children. And when I don’t, I choose the people I drone on to about them very carefully. My co-parent, for example, never tires of hearing my philosophy on why one of them twirls her hair around to get to sleep and the other rams her head against the wall. But I wouldn’t try it with my postman. Or the person sitting next to me at a dinner party.

Anyway, it was a great party. You can always tell by the quality of the sing-song. It featured hits from sources as varied as Lady Ga Ga, The Las, Ron Sexsmith and Mickey MacConnell. The ranting man even did a riveting version of I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls. I would have stayed longer except I got a text message that said "one of them has woken up". How boring.

roisin@irishtimes.com

THIS WEEKEND: Róisín will be cramming for her next book club meeting. This month’s book is ‘How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read’, by Pierre Bayard. Or maybe she will just read other people’s reviews online and regurgitate same.