What exactly did you want us to say?

The place, Jersey.

The year, 1989.

Saint Helier; Capitol of Jersey, home of ace detective Bergerac and not the location of the most random and frankly ridiculous question ever posed to me by my parents.

The location of the most random and frankly ridiculous question ever posed to me by my parents was on the other side of the island, in a place I cannot recall the name of, so shall name it Geoff.

It was a balmy summer’s day in Geoff and my family and I were playing crazy-golf, or should you prefer speaking in the American vernacular, miniature golf. Although why the Americans call it miniature golf is beyond me. If you’re hitting a golf ball through moving windmills, giant clown faces and stationary Triceratopses you’ve clearly had some form of psychotic break and thus, things are crazy, not mini.

Regardless of your vocabulary choice, when you’re but a wee bairn crazy-golf is a wildly entertaining way to pass the time. Hence why, on this particular day, we’d gone to Geoff to play it. Or rather, not play it, for the most random and frankly ridiculous question ever posed to me by my parents came amidst a scolding for not taking hitting a golf ball through the posterior of a wooden chicken seriously.

For instead of crazy-golfing, my sister was sneakily placing the ball into the hole by hand as my brother surreptitiously nibbled on the various obstacles whilst I hunted various Jersey-based mammalian animals with my putter. As we were supposed to be learning, a scolding was necessary to focus our minds on the ancient art of putting.

A scolding so epic all I can remember is:

la la la stop cheating blah blah blah you’ll get sick if you eat that wooden rhino tusk la la la here, use this, you’ll find two putters are better for hunting voles blah blah blah we’ve been thinking we should introduce spanking as a method of discipline, would you like us to spank you? la la…huh?

I repeat.

Huh?

Obviously it didn’t take us long to reach the rather surprising conclusion of ‘no, we don’t think you should smack us’. So we returned to our sneaking/nibbling/hunting ways wondering what exactly you expected us to say to that rather random and frankly ridiculous question?