MY mother and father were salt of the earth types, both reared on remote hillside farms in rural Ireland at a time when educational opportunities were limited, money was tight and emigration was an everyday reality.

That background shaped their lives, made them who they were. And, of course, they were Catholic to the core.

I grew up in a house where in childhood we said the rosary every night, went to confessions every week, and on Sunday not only did we go to Mass but in the evening at 6pm we used to go to Benediction.

All this shaped us to see the world through a narrow prism of good and bad. It was also the era where questioning the authority of ‘your betters’ was frowned upon.

Linzi McLaren: We may have peace, but have mindsets really changed?

You don’t need Einstein to work out that this tunnel vision of life was way, way too simplistic. We were so naïve, we almost literally bought the Hollywood version of the world, not the real one.

Looking back on it now, you just have to ask yourself why, to use a simple example, as children we ended up playing cowboys and Indians when neither cowboys nor Indians had any connection with Ireland or its history.

Why weren’t we playing hurling like Setanta and his famous hound? Or thinking we were Michael Collins fighting the Black and Tans?

Why did we never think to query the narrative that the Indians were evil savages and that John Wayne was always the good guy?

I remember too as a wee........

© The Irish News