The secret life of parents

I have an image of the future in my head in which our daughter asks us what we do after she's gone to bed and we guiltily look at each other before turning to her and emphatically saying "nothing". And as parents are inherently uncool and even sensitive children are self-centred, I suspect she will believe us.

Turns out though that parents have a secret life. Somewhere behind the boundary setting and the saying no, the 'up to beds' and the 'dinner times', when the baby isn't looking we have fun. We have fun with the baby too of course, but we have fun just the two of us as well. We can spend twenty minutes laughing at a rude joke or making faces at each other or gossiping or just, you know, having a laugh, I wonder whether the baby will ever realise we have this secret life of immaturity, where farts are funny, swear words are used with abandon and all the boundaries we give her are broken by us. 

And if we have fun when the baby isn't looking, casting aside the responsibility of parenthood for a moment and becoming two people who can do other things, then isn't it likely our parents did the same? Which is weird because you know how you think all that happened when you were younger and in bed was your parents watched telly and spoke about you? Well they probably did that, but they probably spent a lot of time laughing at farts too. 

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