“Have I ever been an embarrassing parent?” I asked my son the other day. “Quite often,” he muttered with feeling. He then proceeded to list everything I’d done to show him up, from the day I fell off a fairground roundabout (stone-cold sober, I hasten to add) to all the times I’d insisted on staying to watch him ride his bike at the skate park. I pretended I wasn’t with ...keep reading