LIFE LESSONS

KATY HARRINGTON I was a dream baby, and a nightmare teen

Ihave, in the past, heard my mum recall her hellish labours with both my older brothers. In my head, she’s strapped to a hospital bed somewhere in a post-apocalyptic Cork, and then it all goes a bit Sigourney Weaver in Alien.

My birth was more like a scene from Snow White — birds twittering in the trees, the sun rising over the hill, and definitely no forceps. My mother gave a polite cough and baby Katy slipped out as easily as a pat of butter.

From placid butter baby, I grew into a docile toddler. In our 1980s home videos, my mum (sporting a mullet and a full-length velour dressing gown) watches on as my brothers demolish their Christmas presents, while somewhere in the corner I am entertaining myself by calmly folding discarded wrapping paper.

Because I was a ‘good’ child, it was quite a shock to the system when I turned 15 and discovered my true talent – the art of answering back. Despite being white, middle class and from a loving home, once I hit puberty, I embraced the true tenet of teenageness — that EVERYTHING is grossly unfair. I didn’t move out and live with a weed-smoking older boyfriend, instead I rebelled by fundamentally disagreeing with everything anyone ever said, except for Kurt Cobain.

I ripped my clothes, shaved my hair, got a piercing and wrote profound statements in my diary (“I saw Gavin in the corridor today and it’s crazy because he doesn’t even realise how much I actually love him”).

After one snotty exchange with my dad, I remember him looking at me genuinely bewildered. He summed up what most parents think when they look at their teenage offspring with one question — “What happened to you?”