100 Childhood Memories: Part One

This post is actually being written in January 2006. I'm hiding it back here in the archives so that it remains somewhat under the radar and out of the way of my current posts. My rationale for writing the list can be found here.

So, without further ado, here is my "100 childhood memories" list:

1. Probably one of my earliest memories is of going to school. I must have been in grade one. My mother used to walk me up to the school gate as I think I was nervous about going in by myself. I must have been bawling my eyes out or something. I'm not sure.
   
2. Another early school memory is of an exchange I had with another student. I think I was in grade one. The other student was an Aboriginal boy and for some reason I thought he was "dirty". I guess racism starts early. Thank god I've grown a brain since then.
3. Grade 2 (1977): My teacher was Mrs Stafford. I remember getting in trouble from her for some reason. I think I was next to her desk with a slate. She smacked me.
4. Grade 3 (1978): I made a macrame plant holder.
5. In either grade 3 or 4, my teacher (Miss Ewart?) read the novel, "Against The Wind" to the class. I must have liked it because I eventually bought the novel.
6. A childhood recurring dream that I think I had several times involved an intruder coming into the house. The intruder chopped off each family member's leg up to the knee. I don't know if I was included in that though. It could have just been my father, mother and brother. The family members would lie on the floor with their legs missing.
   
7. My mother and father separated when I was in grade 4 I think (1979). I remember my mother moving my brother and me, and herself too of course, into a house owned by my Uncle Dick (her brother). While living at the house, my father came to visit. I remember looking out the lounge room window on the second storey and seeing my father on the front verandah.
8. One night while living in Uncle Dick's house, my mother wanted me to go downstairs to collect the dog's bowl. My mother was standing with me at the top of the house's back stairs. She was getting incredibly frustrated with me because I didn't go and get the bowl. I didn't tell her the real reason for not going down stairs, that of being scared of the dark. Instead I told her that I could not see the bowl.
9. Also while still living in Uncle Dick's house, I lost my Snoopy broach on the way to school one morning. I'm pretty sure that I found it lying on the footpath on my way home from school that afternoon.
10. My Uncle Dick and his wife lived in a house which was directly in front of the house where my mother took my brother and me to live after leaving my father. This house had a pool which my brother and I swam in occasionally. The family Christmas Day get together was often held at this house as well. One day whilst at the house swimming in the pool, I tried to eat a dried apricot. I thought it tasted disgusting and brought it back up in the bathroom sink. I remember desperately trying to hide the evidence, but I think I eventually just left it in the sink. Yuck!
    
11. When my mother, brother and I returned to the family home after Dad had moved out, I remember it being dark and musty.
12. My brother and I used to visit Dad on Sundays. Dad was living with his father and mother until she passed away. We would sometimes go to the house, but more often than not I think Dad used to take us ten pin bowling and then we would go on a drive in the afternoon.
13. During one of those drives, I remember trying to sit in the front seat of the car on the way home. My brother pulled me from the front seat. I had to sit in the back, which was my usual position anyway. I felt angry at my brother for physically pulling me from the front of the car.
14. I never learnt to tie my shoe laces until rather late in my childhood. During one of my mid primary school years I remember having to take my shoes off for a particular class. I was one of the very few (I think there may have been one other student) that couldn't put my own shoes back on. I remember it being a bit of a drama.
15. During primary school I liked buying packets of "Ollos" from the tuckshop. Ollos were cheesy round chips. I used to share a few of these chips with a friend of mine (Amanda). She would put a chip on each of her fingers.
16. I tried out for my primary school choir one year. I got in. One day the music teacher was trying to teach the choir a new song. The song contained a section of whistling. A section of the choir, including me, couldn't whistle well enough, so we hummed the section instead.
    
17. I was definitely not a sporty kid whilst attending primary school. During the school's sports carnival when I was in year 7, the last year of primary school, I was in the ball sports team. The ball sports teams were basically made up of students who where really bad at athletics. I remember a teacher suggesting that perhaps I would like to join one of the running teams in lieu of the ball sports team. Under no circumstance was I prepared to do so. Since I was in grade 7, I wanted to be the captain of the ball sports team.
    
18. One day I was playing with my brother at the front of my childhood home. I think we had our little play tent erected in the front yard. My brother and I were eating grass. My mother must have been listening to us from inside the house. When we went inside my mother asked us if we had been eating grass. I think we told her that we hadn't. She got very angry and yelled at us.
19. After washing our childhood dog, a welsh corgi named Prince, we would play with him out the front of our house. His chest looked so white and clean as he raced down the footpath.
20. My childhood home was next to a butcher's shop. Prince would wait at the front gates for the meat delivery truck. The people who drove the truck would give Prince a bone.
21. When Prince got older he developed some sort of skin disease that caused him to lose fur on a section of his back.
22. Prince disappeared under mysterious circumstances. My mother thought that he had been taken for "bait" by someone who had racing greyhounds.
23. I remember sitting on the back stairs with Prince one day, listening to my mother belt the shit out of my brother. She used to use a cane on him. She very rarely hit me however, maybe only once or twice.
24. I remember wetting the bed one night. I was actually quite old to be wetting the bed. I'm not sure of my exact age at the time, but I was in primary school. I was getting up constantly that night to go to the toilet. At the end I got sick of getting up, so I just peed then and there. Yuck! My mother was angry at me for wetting the bed.
25. My Nan (maternal grandmother) lived in quite a large two bedroom, two storey house. The house had the longest toilet I've ever seen.
26. My Nan's house also had a large back verandah. One night I watched the flying foxes in a tree from the verandah.
27. My Nan took in a gentleman border who lived in the granny flat underneath her house. He killed himself by shooting himself in the face. I remember my mother telling me how she had found him.
28. My Nan bought a plush bear which she thought was a dog. My mother laughed at her and told her that it wasn't a bear but actually a dog. I still have that plush bear to this day. It's one of the very few things that I have of my grandmother's.
29. My Nan passed away after a stroke in early 1983 (I think). My mother would not let me go to the funeral. My mother was very upset that the family chose to cremate my Nan and scatter her ashes in a crematorium's rose garden. I did not visit where my Nan's ashes were scattered until well into adulthood.
30. My mother told me that when my Nan passed away her eyes suddenly opened. My mother took this as my Nan's soul leaving her body. My mother looked at it as an unpleasant and non-peaceful death.
    
31. I had very few friends at school. Whilst in high school I dreaded my friends being absent from school because I felt so out of place.
    
32. I remember standing at the bike racks at what was probably the first day of high school for me. I had long, white socks on and felt nervous and daggy.
33. I was bullied by a few of the "in girls" during high school. At the start of grade 9 I remember attending my first home economics class, where a student drew on my uniform shirt with a pen. I quickly changed from the home economics class into a history class.
    
34. Shortly after I left school and was working as a junior administration assistant I saw one of the girls that used to bully me. She was working as a check out chick at KMart. In the immortal words of Nelson from "The Simpsons", "HA HA!"
    
35. My mother told me that my father had held a gun to her. I can't remember when she told me this however.
36. I was so sad one night that I went into the bathroom and cut my hands many times with one of my mother's old style razors. The wounds were very superficial though.
37. Another time, I went into the bathroom and hit my hand continually on the window. I wanted it to hurt and bruise, which it did.
38. I remember scavenging around my mother's bedroom one day and finding a Cleo magazine. At that stage, Cleo's had a male centrefold, which I looked at.
39. After my mother and father split, my mother attended a social group called "Parents Without Partners". She used to take me along to the family days.
40. She met her de facto husband, Ernie, at Parents Without Partners. He moved into our childhood home to be with my mother.
41. When Ernie first moved in with us, he owned a old green Chevy, complete with fins. It was a gorgeous car.
42. One morning whilst in high school, I rushed off to the bathroom to shave my legs because I thought they were looking a bit yuck. My mother laughed at me for doing so.
43. Ernie's two children, Chris and Sarah used to come to our place for the odd custody visit. During one of these visits one of them broke my "Slinky", which I wasn't too happy about.
44. I don't think my mother used to like Ernie's children, or for that matter Ernie's ex wife. The children certainly didn't visit all that much. I think my mother's low opinion of Ernie's family influenced my own opinion of them.
    
45. My mother used to make me give a father's day card and present to Ernie. I resented it but did it anyway.
46. One night when my mother, Ernie and I were still living in my childhood home, someone lobbed a brick through the neighbouring butcher shop's window. That night was seen as a bit of a drama in the household. I remember saying something to both my mother and Ernie that night, but my mother basically told me to shut up and that it wasn't my concern. That was the only time that Ernie ever stood up for me. He told my mother that she was being unfair and that I was a part of it too.
47. I broke a glass in the sink once. A shard of glass cut quite deeply into my thumb. I felt all cold and clammy after it happened. My mother took me to the doctor to see if the wound needed stitching but it didn't.
    
48. One night when my mother had driven me over to Ernie's ex wife's house I had quite a large asthma attack. I wouldn't settle, so my mother rushed me home and filled me full of Ventolin. It took ages for me to recover my breathing.
    
49. My mother used to whinge about her friends. I remember her having a friend called Shirley who was my brother's best friend's mother. My mother whinged about Shirley coming around all the time for coffee and burdening her with her problems. I remember my mother having similar whinges about a couple of her other friends.
50. I remember my mother telling me about my brother's best friend. About the time one of the Mad Max movies came out, this friend took to wearing one long sleeve and one short sleeve like the Mad Max character. My mother told me that she thought this friend was weird.
    

Wow, this post is becoming incredibly long. I think I might split it up into a part one and a part two.

~ End of part one ~