Many years ago, our family went to the World’s Fair in Montreal, Canada. I was a semi-little guy, but a budding young smartaleck  nonetheless.

My mom had a genius: Have shirts custom made for the family, so that all eight of us would walk around the World’s Fair looking alike. There might have been a safety side to the plan, but I never knew.

So mom had eight shirts made by the Dutch Made company. All of the shirts were an itchy short sleeve with cuffs. The women folk all had red and white checkers and the men all had blue and white checkers. This was a highly embarrassing way to cruise around the world’s most prestigious fair.

Being the frugal truck driver-type family we were, mom and dad decided we should save money by taking our lunch in with us. But the days being what they were, mom had no way for us to carry the sandwiches around with us. No picnic basket. No backpack.

Finding an opportunity to insert a smart comment I piped up with “We could put it in Dad’s suitcase!”

Mom looked at dad and they both smiled. Dad raised his eyebrows. I knew we were about to enter a new era of family embarrassment.

The sandwiches, carrots, and pudding were loaded into dad’s metal truck driver suitcase (the one that had seen “one million miles”), and off we went for the entrance gates.

If we had done this in 2012, our entire family would have been suspected of being terrorists, detained in a dank little side room, and our suitcase blown up in the “bomb bin”.

As it turned out, we turned a blind eye to the show stopping presence of the Begly family in Montreal, and had a great visit.

I think it’s time to pass on the “embarrassment”  torch to my children…