IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:What has Obama, cod, power and goldfish got in common? Answer: my family, writes ADAM BROPHY.
‘AH DAD, how much longer is he gonna be speeching for? He’s been going forever.”
Roll of eyes and exasperated sigh, back to her book.
“Starting today we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America,” says Mr Obama.
I try to invoke a sense of history. I ask her do those words not excite her, not make her wonder for the future? She fixes me a stare. “I’m only allowed play Wii for 20 minutes before dinner and I can’t get at the telly because of him.”
“Come on,” I say, “We’ll take the dog for a walk. I’ll catch up with Barack later.”
She peels off the couch and falls in line. A half-hour later we emerge back through the door, chilled. The RTÉ highlights reel is coming to an end, but the elder isn’t to know this. “Dad, he’s still at it! For God’s sake!”
But the credits roll and she relaxes, then becomes philosophical. “If I was a man, I’d become president.”
Cue boos and hisses from her women’s studies graduate of a mother. Much spluttering and bemoaning the pretence of equality, glass ceilings and the like. The elder looks more confused now than during the inauguration speech. But she gets the drift: “So, I could be president?”
“Yes, of course. We have a woman president in Ireland right now. Her name is Mary McAleese.”
“Now I know you’re only messing. Bertie is the president.”
Brian, you’d want to have a word with your PR people about the youth vote.
Now that the path has been cleared, her lack of ambition is highlighted. She thinks for a while about leading the country and rejects it as an option. She comes up, instead, with an idea whereby she can reap the benefits without any exertion.
“Dad, will you become president, then mum can be the queen and I can be the princess? We’ll rule over Dublin and Cork and Manchester United and do whatever we want.”
We enter the philosophy of power. Having moved by this time to the dinner table, the missus, as she encourages the digestion of vegetables, explains that power isn’t about being able to do whatever one pleases.
“Well, what’s the point then?” the elder poses the obvious question. “I mean if dad was president, then nobody could tell me what to do.”
The missus once again tries to bring the fantasy around to the possibility that if a parent is going to have the top job, it could just as easily be her, but nobody’s buying it. Besides, the elder has brought power into the micro-environment.
“If he’s not going to be president, he could be my teacher.”
“If I were your teacher then you would feel you had Mr T in your classroom and you would know PAIN!” says I, hoping to reinforce my point through her encyclopaedic knowledge of TV advertising, but she barely pauses in her rebuttal.
“Yeah, you’d never give me any homework. But you could also be the principal and boss all the other teachers around and make sure none of my friends got into trouble.”
I make a half-hearted attempt to push the serious father figure persona but drop it soon enough and agree with her that that’s probably what I’d do. If she told me to.
For a while we play an imaginary game of Daddy The Boss Of The School which is great because it distracts both kids for long enough that they don’t realise they’re eating fish. Eventually, however, they twig that they’ve been conned and cod now resides in their bellies.
“Fish is brain food. Barack Obama must have eaten a lot of fish to get where he is today,” says the missus in an attempt to get away from her treachery.
“Why, what type of fish was it, the salmon of knowledge?” replies the elder, managing to be cheeky and show off what she’s been learning in school at the same time. Maybe politics isn’t such a stretch.
“The story of the salmon of knowledge probably comes from the fact that fish is good for your brain,” I offer.
“There’s always an element of practical truth in those old tales.”
Before I even get to the end of my dire and predictable sermon she is distracted, looking over my shoulder at the fish tank where Goldie and Bubbles reside.
“If they’re so good for us, can I eat the goldfish?” she asks.
“If you were president, you could do whatever you like,” says the missus.