I have loads of random memories from my childhood. I’m not even sure if some are real…for me trying to remember things from when I was a kid is much like when you drink too much and wake up the next morning trying to decipher your dreams from reality and then you see a new friend request on Facebook and realise that you DID make out with that gross guy with the awful white-boy afro who was wearing some Jurassic Park shirt (possibly ironically…but then again maybe not)…It then becomes clear that you weren’t actually hanging out with Sarah Silverman and Samuel Jackson…and a unicorn…in Japan…. on a rainbow. Yeah
I say this because often my more exciting memories probably aren’t true…or not entirely true anyway. You know that whole thing about “There‘s three sides to every story, your version, their version and the truth”?… I’ve always loved that. I love hearing somebody retell something that just happened and how each time they tell it its more exaggerated. Sometimes its obvious that they are lying for dramatic effect and sometimes its clear that they really do believe that something happened…like once I REALLY genuinely thought I saw Jack Nicolson at Club 77 and tried to find him again and this guy was like “Look either your lying or you‘re fucking stupid”…I think I was just super drunk…but anyway.
I’ve always loved that as a film technique though, showing a situation from different characters point of view and how much our sense of reality can vary.
Something happened when I was 5 that my friend Mel and I recall so clearly, so I know it happened because we’ve talked about it BUT nobody else recalls.
We decided it would be funny to draw a giant X in my yard and tell my younger brother, Zac and her younger sister, Kara that there was buried treasure. They dug a hole in the yard trying to find the treasure at which point my Auntie Sandra who was taking care of us that day, came out and saw it then Mel and I get in trouble for making them do it…and we had to sit in the ‘poo corner’ which was like the naughty corner…there wasn’t actual poo there. It was a name that my parents got from my preschool. Anyway, my Mum and Dad do not recall anyone digging a hole in the yard, nor do Auntie Sandra or either of our siblings…but we know it happened.
Here are some other things that I remember(in all their vagueness):
-I know I have mentioned it before but one thing I remember is my first ever crush and even though I have still never learnt his name and it’s all kinds of political incorrectness to refer to him as “the black boy from the kids tv show ‘Lift off’ ….”…. I just did. I remember not really understanding the concept of ‘acting’ and just feeling like he was my friend…trapped in a tv screen…who only visited at 9 am on weekdays. If anyone knows him, tell him to give me a call but leave out the part where I referred to him as “the black boy”
-I remember Barbie dolls and how when I got to a certain age, my friends and I would pretend that we didn’t play with them anymore …but then still would secretly in pairs…. It was like this underground club that we all knew about but weren’t supposed to talk about… The first rule of Barbie club is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT BARBIE CLUB…THE SECOND RULE OF BARBIE CLUB IS YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT BARBIE CLUB… I remember pretending that the wooden ladder on my bunk beds were apartments for the barbies… then I used to make them have sex with each other but in those days I thought that sex was just two people being in their underwear next to each other so I’d make Barbie and Ken be in the same apartment in their plastic undies…WHAT A PERVE.
-I remember how I stole a plastic ring once from BIG W and my mum got mad.
I remember that I stole another ring from this girl who was staying with neighbours of ours then I said to Mum “I‘m going outside to look for jewellery in the garden”…and I pretended that I found it in our yard and Mum made me take it back… I don’t know what tipped her off…that plan sounds pretty flawless…
I also used to try and claim rings that were found at my primary school…
I was pretty into stealing rings apparently…I think the obsession stopped around grade 2...mostly because I am a shocking liar and always had to end up giving them back.
-I remember never really getting sick much as a child…well I got the chicken pox but I was never sick like I am now with a new kind of cold each week. I remember that my brother and I both lied once about being sick on the same day to get out of school…only he was smart enough to come up with an actual illness and I just said “I‘m sick”. So my parents made us do jobs around the house to ensure that we had a horrible day off and wouldn’t lie about being sick anymore.
-There is a story that my family still joke about and a catchphrase that I’ve earned, called “I‘ll get the drinks”. Its origin is derived from the time we had to clean the cubby house and I split the tasks between my brother and sister…you dust…you sweep…and me? …I’ll get the drinks…at which point I disappeared for an extended period of time and eventually returned with only one drink…for me then said something along the lines of “Oh sorry did you want some too?”…then disappeared again.
-I do not remember a lot from preschool except that they always gave us devon on our sandwiches…no not the 90’s heartthrob Devon Sawa who starred in Casper…but that crap manufactured meat that when I eat now still reminds me of preschool.
I also have a hilarious group portrait that my parents paid good money for where I can easily be identified and the girl in the polka dot dress…pulling a monkey face.
So to sum up I was a lying, sly, ring stealing child, who was also a bit of a perve and told lies both to get out of doing things and because I thought it was funny to mess with people…(the pointless lying bit is still the same and I am still terrible at it but it does not deter me from trying…no matter how many times people tell me to leave them alone when I try to convince them that I read that Taylor Swift is a lesbian or that my dog was in a Kmart add) and now karma has caught up with me and I get the flu much more often than I did back then…oh yeah and I ate devon.
