IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:How come the 'right' feelings are not mine? asks Adam Brophy.
IT'S A strange sensation when you realise your own feelings are at odds with the ethos assumed by many of your friends.
I have ambitious plans to compile a manual (am copyrighting this idea right now) and update it twice yearly called The Right Thoughts On . . . Then, whenever in company, and faced with a tricky situation one could ask oneself, "what are we thinking about [insert topic here] these days?" and simply look up the required subject in your handy user's guide.
Subjects would range from Northern Ireland to Tibet, unions to Tesco, air travel to SUVs. Life would be made so much easier.
For example, the elder attends a national school that, for whatever reason, supplies all pupils with a packed lunch every day. Am I supposed to reject this because it's wrong ethically to take advantage of the system when we can afford an organic alternative? Or should I be thankful that the system to which we contribute so readily is kicking something back? I can't get beyond how great it is not to have to make sandwiches in the morning.
Another dilemma involves an SUV I would like to purchase. First off, I like the look of it: it's way more handsome than a mucky auld estate. Second, an SUV will take a good kicking from the kids - which they've administered to every car we've owned thus far.
And, finally, I want to assuage my low self-esteem by sitting up high and sneering down on the rest of you. Well, the half of you who haven't succumbed to the SUV epidemic already.
I know, even without checking the manual, that my big car fetish is unacceptable among my peers, but all that has done is made me more securely entrenched in my initially wavering stance on this topic.
It has also made me look harder at my contemporaries' traditionally held positions and wonder if I ever really upheld them or if my indifference towards them now is simply a natural progression and the result of getting older and more belligerent. Among the topics that currently send me into violent spasm are: the obsession with buying organic; the demand for Educate Together schools; the Toyota Prius; spa weekends; and still chortling at the notion of rugby internationals being played on the northside. Each can inspire a rant, an abridged version of which follows in the next paragraph.
If you really want to ease your conscience and feel safe about the food on your table buy Fair Trade or local produce and don't concern yourself with the extortionate mark-up organic farmers are tagging on. The local national school is as good, if not better, than the Educate Together option. The BMW 520d returns higher fuel efficiency figures than a Prius and is a proper car.
For a half-decent, invigorating weekend, go trudging round the wilds of west Cork or Kerry before tucking into some seriously well-earned stout, and rugby should be played in Croker - it's one of the best stadiums in Europe.
I always thought that, as the kids grew, I would develop a stronger social conscience while becoming more relaxed in a cardigan-wearing, pipe-smoking way. Instead, a sort of politically incorrect lethargy is gripping me while I become more socially agitated.
It's as if the ghost of Alf Garnett has consumed me but left me comatose. I presumed my previously indifferent attitude to the plight of the polar ice caps would be replaced by a burning desire for the world to be maintained as a freshly squeezed green utopia so that my ruddy-cheeked children could savour its majesty.
But there's a noise that sums up my attitude to the whole dilemma right now, and it sounds something like "meh". And meh works for a whole host of hot topics. In fact, I probably won't need a copy of The Right Thoughts On . . . because meh will suffice whenever asked an opinion on anything beyond my own four walls.
Even within those walls I'm struggling to discover - never mind toe - a party line, but fortunately the questions I face in here are a little less searching.
They usually start with "Can we have a . . ." and finish with some variety of treat, anything from a DVD to an ice-cream or a pony. Here my newly reinforced lethargy is causing problems though as I can never remember if we're granting favours at the moment or not.
Invariably, I give in and allow most of what they demand and am then flayed when the law arrives home from work. But the whole discrepancy of approach is exposed when friends come to visit: one will accuse me of being overly strict while the next will consider me inappropriately lax.
As usual, the home mirrors the outside world. I just can't keep up with who I'm trying to impress and why.