If you can’t embarrass a family member, who can you embarrass?                                                                                                         By Dave Hamby

              What goes around comes around.  As ye sow, so shall ye reap.  At least that’s what folks say.  It’s a lucky thing for me that’s not always true. I am getting to enjoy some of this turn about being fair play from my teenage daughters though.

              Any parent can recall times when their kids have embarrassed them.  

              The first event that pops into my mind is when I read my oldest daughter, Lisa, the nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat, who could eat no fat, and his wife, who could eat no lean. Lisa was just barely three and she asked me what fat was. Believe it or not this was so long ago I was really a skinny dude so she didn’t just have to look at me for an example.  I explained to her about fat and used some pudgy kinfolk as examples.  

              That evening when we were at the bowling alley I heard my daughter yell at me from across the floor.  “Hey Daddy,” she shouted standing next to about a four hundred pound Hell’s Angel looking type of guy.  She had her little fore finger poking into the bottom of his ample overhang. “This guy’s fat, right?”

             I was torn between running over there and scooping up my precious little girl and possibly getting my head torn off by a really angry looking fat fellow, or pretending I didn’t know who this kid was and living a long but sad life.  

             Luckily she ran over to me repeating herself, “ HEY DADDY!   HE’S FAT, RIGHT?”  She got enough distance between herself and my ultimate demise for me to be able tosnatch her up and run out of the front door without either one of us suffering any undo consequences. It was a good thing for us that fat people aren’t very fast.

              I can also remember the time Caitlin, my middle daughter, was playing with her drinking straw at Threadgill’s.  She blew a whole straw full of milk over the front of this really well dressed guy who had the misfortune to be seated next to us. He also got really upset, but I was bigger than him and didn’t fear so much for my life.  

              And then there was the time that Nanoo, my youngest girl, and Caitlin were messing around while we were eating at a McDonald’s. Caitlin said something that was really funny and Nanoo burst out laughing.  The bad news was she had a mouth full of Dr. Pepper at the time. Two streams of used soda pop went shooting out of her nose spraying the top of a bald headed guy who was across the counter from us, bent over eating a hamburger.  I think he must of been a Daddy also because he just looked up with a grin and wiped off his bald spot as I apologized profusely.  Then he went back to eating his hamburger.

              What brings all of these recollections to mind is something that happened the other day.  

              Caitlin and her boyfriend Brad were sitting on the couch in our playroom after school watching TV.  They were scrunched down real low, you know, enjoying being close to each other.  I’m sure you’ve seen how low kids can scrunch down these days when you’ve seen a car going down the road with no apparent driver.  The couch they were sitting in has its back at a 90-degree angle to the door that goes to our garage.  The love seat next to it faces that very same door.  Hannah, our 85 pound black lab mix, was laying on the love seat across from them keeping a close eye on Brad.

              That’s when Teri, my wife, came home from work.  As she stepped through the door she spotted Hannah on the love seat and shouted “YOU GET OFF OF THAT COUCH RIGHT NOW, YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THAT!”  You see, even though we love our dogs, they’re not supposed to be up on the furniture.  

              As Hannah flew off the love seat a red-faced Brad jumped up from the couch and said, “Mr. Hamby said it was OK for us to be in here.”  

               My wife bit her lip and managed to get all the way into our bedroom before she burst out laughing.  

             When my wife told me what had happened all I could think of was, ”At last, Payback!”

              Our daughter later informed us that this kind of parental behavior is very embarrassing.  “Well, what goes around comes around,” was all I could say.  She’ll understand when she has a child of her own.

             As embarrassing as these events were for my daughter, they paled when compared to reading about them in our local newspaper.  She asked that I not write about any more of her misadventures in the future.  I assured her I wouldn’t. Of course, I’m the guy who sold her on Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, trusting our government and a whole bunch of other stuff that’s not completely true.

This article originally appeared in the Round Rock Leader.   It has since been modified and is available for your publication.