Yes, son, they’re going to laugh at you

I don’t even like Eddie Money.

I interviewed him out in Ohio at my old job — during which I got into an argument with him over why he wasn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — and now I’m afraid he’s going to follow me back here, where he’ll undoubtedly be featured some future summer night at the Wild Rose casino.

But last night as we were cleaning up after supper, “Two Tickets to Paradise” inexplicably popped into my head.

I started singing out loud. My wife joined right in.

Things took a turn for the worse, however, when we tried harmonizing.

“Do you think we’re going to embarrass Henry?” my wife asked.

Henry is a 5-year-old who’s already bore witness to some incredibly weird stuff in his short time on Earth — not the least of which includes his teetotaler parents crazily singing “Margaritaville” and “The Pina Colada Song” aloud together in the kitchen.

(As a side note, I have no idea why, but the songs that pop into my head are almost exclusively the worst songs of all time.)

Comparatively speaking, I suppose Henry doesn’t have it all that bad.

Richard Pryor grew up in a brothel.

Henry will probably grow up to be OK.

But Henry is rapidly becoming more and more self-conscious.

A couple of weekends ago, as we were getting ready to go to the pool, we realized that Henry’s beach towel was dirty.

My wife instructed him to take hers.

“Noooo,” he whined. “People will laugh at me.”

In another episode, Henry looked me over one recent weekend and asked, “Why do you wear girl socks?”

He was speaking about my brightly colored, Hawaiian-themed socks.

To be honest, I thought I had a few more years of oddball bliss before my kid began worrying about what others thought.

It was never a matter of if — just when.

I remember those days well myself, of not having the right shoes or the right jeans.

Middle school was particularly brutal. Probably still is.

It was the late ’80s, and my folks were still driving a ’70s-era Ford Galaxie that, in my mind, was roughly the color of Linda Blair’s projectile vomit in “The Exorcist.”

On the way to school, I would make my mom drop me off a couple of blocks away, at which point I’d walk.

You know, ’cause it’s so much cooler to walk to school in January than to be seen in a car with heat.

I vividly remember being with my mom one afternoon after school when I spotted two girls in my grade walking toward the car.

I ducked down with a kind of urgency not seen since Anne Frank’s family hid from the Gestapo.

Fortunately, this was all just a phase in my life. Ironically, I’d love to have that Ford Galaxie nowadays.

Unfortunately, some people never grow out of it.

My wife and I once were at a restaurant in Des Moines that served drinks with twisty straws in them.

At the table next to us was a group of businessmen who had all straightened their twisty straws.

I haven’t worn a proper pair of dress shoes since I had my senior pictures taken at Catchlight, preferring to wear Vans most days.

I wore my Vans sneakers emblazoned with Iron Man on them — as in the comic book character — several months ago when I spoke to the local Rotary Club.

When I opened up the floor for questions, I was asked, “What’s up with your shoes?”

Would you believe I wore those same shoes to the interview for this job?

Whether or not Henry will snap out of it and let his freak flag fly, like I did, or permanently become the Alex P. Keaton of our family is the great unknown.

It’s far too early to tell.

No matter how long it takes, though, we’ll be there waiting for him on the other side.

Besides, “Two Tickets to Paradise” would sound so much better if we tried it with three-part harmony.