‘I’ve got a secret’ is a game he doesn’t want to play

A friend and I were killing time in the lunchroom the other day when the conversation veered in an unexpected direction. She happily plowed ahead. Ever the wary one, I balked.

But the conversation has had me thinking ever since, so here goes.

A couple of baby boomers, my friend and I were talking about our parents and their generation. More specifically, we wondered about their secrets.

We started with the premise that our parents, like just about everyone else, probably had some. In a way, even that is a novel thought -- to imagine that Mom and Dad kept part of their lives unrevealed to their beloved know-it-all kids.

What intrigued us was our own metamorphosis. That is, you grow up thinking you have a handle on your parents’ true selves. Or, perhaps more likely, you don’t give it much thought.

But then you become an adult, perhaps with kids of your own, and you realize they don’t know everything about you. In fact, they may not know the half of you. That realization leads you to wonder how much about your parents you didn’t know.

I’m not necessarily talking about salacious or hurtful secrets. They could be as benign as not knowing that your mother gave up playing the piano as a kid but always wanted to be a concert pianist, or that your father seriously considered taking a job when you were 10 that would have moved the family to Australia and changed your life story.

That’s when I discovered in talking with my friend that you can divide adult children into two camps: those of us who want to read our parents’ diaries and those who don’t.

My friend said she’d like to.

I don’t.

She says knowing would give her a more fleshed-out knowledge of who her parents were. How we see them as kids is indelibly shaped by how they treat us, but that doesn’t automatically translate into who they were. She wants the full picture.

I think I know my parents well, even though my father shuffled off this mortal coil in 1993 when he was 70. But I don’t claim to know everything about them or that I could give you an infallible psychological profile.

Nor would I want to see one. It’s not that I’m suspicious or fearful about what I’d learn. Let’s say, for example, my father had another family across town. I could forgive him, but its effect on how I see myself through the prism of my family’s story would weigh heavier than the deed itself.

So, call it taking the easy way out. I make no apologies for just not being up for any surprises. What I already know -- imperfections and all -- is all I want to know.

But that doesn’t lessen my fascination with the subject. And if readers want to play along, feel free.

I’d love to know how many parents now in their 70s or 80s have been sitting on a secret, something they’re certain their grown-up children don’t know about them.

An obvious category would be that the kids were adopted. Or that only one of the children’s two parents was the biological parent.

But how about something like having spent two years in prison before turning your life around and settling down with a family? That’d be a bit of a shocker for your adult kids to learn, wouldn’t it?

Or, being married for 50 years to the same woman but having secretly been in love with your sister-in-law for all that time. I wonder how many adult children would want to know something that close to the core of their parent’s soul.

Most of the benign stuff likely has been exposed. The mother who longed to play concert piano probably told her kids that story. But was that her biggest one?

Secrets are secrets for a reason, and some survive to the grave.

We children learn early on how to keep secrets from our parents. Baby boomers talk with pride or amusement or embarrassment about what our parents don’t know about us. I suspect the generation behind us does the same.

What a hoot to realize that our parents were there first. And to realize that, in our self-indulgence, we forgot to ponder the possibility that they’ve been sitting on a secret or two of their own.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.