What goes around does indeed come around

I guess there are some things that you can't blog about. Sometimes this is because it's simply inadvisable to reveal too much, and other times it's because, although something may have gone on around you, it's not really your story to tell.

So by way of allegory I'll recount a tale from my university days. Maybe this explains why the "how old are you" quiz on Facebook declared me to be 75 today. One of my answers was that I start my conversations with "When I was a kid..." Well hey, when the other choices are "You can't even talk anymore"; "wow, did you see those boobs/abs"; "MOOOOOOM..."; "yo, yo..."; and "listen to me..." wtf else am I going to pick? Anyway, I digress.

Around the beginning of my second year at Uni I started going out with a girl and pretty soon we got pretty serious, if you know what I mean. If we weren't staying at mine we were staying at hers and there weren't many nights we were staying at mine AND hers individually. During the holidays I drove down to Buckinghamshire to spend some time with her at her folks' place and was surprised (not to mention delighted) that her parents just quietly assumed we'd be sleeping together. Remember this is 1976/77 we're talking about. The summer of love was ten years old but parents weren't really part of it, at least not in my world.

So time ticked by, we carried on seeing each other, and eventually in the Easter break she wanted to repay the favour and come up to Nottingham to meet my folks. My folks who had always claimed to be very broad minded, and open minded, but who...well...maybe we'll save that story for another day. Let's just say they didn't always practice what they preached. Which gave me a bit of a dilemma. Did I let things ride and submit to sleeping on the sofa, which I knew would be the default option? Or did I make a stand for human rights (not a very well-used phrase in 1977), which would clearly be the more uncomfortable option parentally speaking?

In the end I decided to make a stand. Pun not intended. I took my parents on one side and said, basically "look, Sue and I sleep together while we're at Uni, and we sleep together while we're at her parents' house. This is your house and what goes on here is up to you, but in the light of what's already going on, are you really going to make me sleep on the sofa?" I didn't plead or cajole or try to make them feel inferior, I just put the facts in front of them and then we went out to the pub.

When we got back, there were two Cadbury's Creme Eggs sitting side by side on the pillow in my bedroom. My Dad's uniquely cryptic and non-embarrassing way of telling me they'd decided to accept the inevitable.

Right there and then something crystallised for me. Although it was never in any doubt in a subconscious way, I made a conscious decision never to put any offspring of mine in a similar position, be they male or female. Because to my mind, if a young person is ready to make that kind of decision, then as a parent you have to be ready to let them. During the intervening years, on the odd occasion when this kind of topic has cropped up in conversation with friends and colleagues, I've come in for some stick on this point. The general consensus of the rest of humanity seems to be "you'll feel differently when it's your own daughter," or "no-one will ever be good enough." But I never subscribed to those views while the conversation was hypothetical, and I'm pleased to say I continue to hold true to my decision, and my principles, now the topic has become material.