There are times when we'd all like to edit our past.
But nothing – and I mean nothing – comes close to the determination with which most parents try to erase the truth about their Life Before Kids (LBK).
Now we're All Grown Up we're so embarrassed about the days when we partied hard, bunked off school to get drunk in the local park or took a year out to go backpacking with that inappropriate ex-boyfriend that we'd rather pretend that it didn't happen at all.
So if you get decidedly twitchy when friends start to talk about the I-was-really-bad old days in front of the children, then spare a thought for Jenna Jameson.
You see, Jenna – who is the most famous porn star in the world – decided to give up her day job when she became pregnant with her twin boys Jesse and Journey, born in March 2009.
Since then she's become so settled in her role as suburban mom that she barely registers the small matter of her 15-year career in the adult entertainment industry.
"I really don't think I need to say, 'Mommy was a porn star,'" she told W magazine recently. "I feel like they're going to know me and think, Mommy loved us so much that she quit everything and made us her job."
Now much as we applaud Jenna's decision to focus on the future, we can't help but worry that she's setting herself up for disaster.
Admittedly, it's going to be a few years before Jenna's boys will be able to understand that she had a life before they were born – let alone a life which entailed stripping, glamour modelling, acting in porn films and launching the interactive website Club Thrust.
But what happens when they start school and notice all the attention she gets from the delighted school gate dads who are already intimately acquainted with her entire, erm, oeuvre?
And how will they cope ten years from now when their friends download some of her most memorable performances and watch her in action?
So if she wants to avoid some excruciatingly awkward questions, we reckon that Jenna should start to break the news gently – and sooner rather than later.
As long as she keeps it age-appropriate, what's the problem?
Given that she's already spoken out about how she was "a natural" at breastfeeding after she had her implants removed, her pre-school boys aren't likely to think there's anything unusual about mommy getting her boobs out in public.
In fact, she could probably get away with telling them that sometimes she 'forgot' to put a top on before she went to work. Or that she used to get very excited about showing her best , ah, girlfriend her sparkly new knickers.
Yes, she'll need to prepare herself for those awkward occasions when the boys proudly tell the supermarket cashier that their mom once won a trophy for kissing another lady, but kids say the funniest things, right?
Okay, she might have a harder job explaining her best-selling 2004 autobiography, How To Make Love Like A Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, but by the time the boys are old enough to read an entire book they'll either be eye-rollingly bored of her raunchy revelations or so deep in denial that any curiosity about their mother's past will be dead and buried.
So you see, there's really no need to hide the truth about your LBK.
Go right ahead and admit that you spent most of the early 90s dancing in a field just outside the M25. Tell them about the time you drank so many tequila slammers that you were sick in your handbag. And own up to the fact that you once snogged the reality TV star who came to open your local supermarket.
Get in there first and volunteer some select snippets of information about your past and you can guarantee that before long they'll lose interest.
And that means you can keep the really naughty stuff firmly under wraps.
Don't worry, your secret's safe with us.
By: Ceri Roberts