THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME . . .

This isn’t the first time that Dad’s embarrassed me in front of everyone. I know most people think their parents are embarrassing, but my dad’s literally the worst. For as long as I can remember, his incredibly weird behaviour has made me a laughing stock at school.

It all started on the first day of junior school. I remember how excited I was when I put on my new school uniform for the very first time, Mum proudly taking a picture of me with her mobile phone to send to my gran. Mum had an early shift on the ambulance, so Dad was the one who actually took me to school. I was feeling a bit nervous on the way there, worrying out loud whether I’d make any friends, but Dad told me I’d be fine. He said the best way to make new friends was to make people smile, but before I’d even got inside my classroom he’d made the whole school start screaming in terror.

It happened when I was lining up outside. All the parents had been kept on one side of the playground, whilst the teachers came out to collect their classes. My class were the first to start filing in, our teacher, Miss Hutchinson, leading the way, but when I turned round to wave goodbye to my dad, I saw that he’d turned green.

And when I say he’d turned green, I don’t mean he looked like he was about to be sick. I mean, his skin was bright green – like he’d just been painted from head to toe with a tin of goblin-green paint. At first he didn’t even seem to have noticed that he’d changed, blowing me a kiss as he waved goodbye. All the other kids in my class were waving to their parents too, but when the boy next to me spotted my dad, he shouted out, ‘Monster!’ and that’s when it all kicked off.

Everyone started screaming at once. Kids were running in every direction, their parents sprinting across the playground to save them from the monster in their midst. Teachers were shouting, trying to get everyone to calm down, but nobody was listening. As far as the pupils of Oakwood Primary School were concerned, my dad was a big green monster who was going to eat them all for breakfast.

I remember standing there in the middle of the playground, tears rolling down my face whilst I tried to work out why Dad looked so strange.

It turned out to be an allergic reaction to the wheatgrass shake that he’d drunk for breakfast, the chlorophyll inside the drink turning my dad’s skin bright green. That’s what Mum told me, but the kids from school still reckoned my dad was some kind of monster. Some of them even started calling me ‘Son of Shrek’ and that’s the nickname that’s stuck for most of junior school.

I suppose I can’t really blame my dad for an allergic reaction, but ever since then he always seems to find a new way to embarrass me.

Like on school sports day, when he took part in the dad’s sack race and got himself disqualified for cheating. As soon as the whistle went to start the race, Dad started bouncing – his bounding leaps taking him the length of the track in six seconds flat, whilst the rest of the dads were still tangled up in their sacks near the start line. Dad bounced so far he actually ended up in the school car park, but by the time he got back to the field our head teacher had given first prize to Amba’s dad instead. Mr Ronson reckoned my dad must’ve been hiding a pogo stick inside his sack to be able to jump like that and told him he should be ashamed of himself for cheating in front of the children. After that, I made sure I came last in the obstacle race. I didn’t want anyone to think I was a cheat as well.

Then there was the time Dad joined the PTA and was put in charge of sorting out the toy stall for the summer fete. There was a huge pile of donations in the school hall and Dad was supposed to go through these to get rid of any broken toys and games. However, when I turned up with the rest of the Key Stage Two volunteers to bring out the trestle tables, we discovered my dad had spent the whole morning building a giant spaceship out of Lego.

It looked like some kind of intergalactic Kinder Surprise, the dome of the egg-shaped spaceship more than two metres tall. There must’ve been a million Lego bricks in that thing. I don’t even know where Dad got them all from, let alone how he had time to build it in the time it took for the bouncy castle to inflate.

At first my friends were really impressed, but when Dad tried to move his model spaceship outside, it started to roll out of control, taking out the soft drinks stall, the chocolate tombola and the second-hand uniform stand, before it bounced off the bouncy castle and exploded in a shower of Lego bricks. The St John Ambulance treated six teachers for minor injuries and then everyone blamed me when the summer fete was cancelled.

I thought this school concert was my chance to put all the teasing behind me at last. I never felt like I fitted in, but since I started at Gym Stars at least I feel like I’m good at something. I remember the ‘ooohhs’ and ‘aaahhs’ from the audience as I raced through my routine, every twist, roll and somersault I made a perfect ten.

Then Dad had to jump on stage and ruin it all again.