100 Childhood Memories: Part Two

This is a continuation of my 100 Childhood Memories: Part One post. Once again, I am writing this list in January 2006 despite the date on top of the post.

1. When I was very young my family had a pet cat. The cat vomited on the lounge room floor. The stain remained on the carpet for quite some time. I was apparently allergic to the cat.
   
2. Prince, the family dog, would chase blue tongue lizards.
   
3. When my mother and father were still married, the family used to go on an annual summer vacation to Cotton Tree on the Sunshine Coast. We stayed in our caravan. From a certain age my brother would sleep on a stretcher in our caravan's annex.
4. At Cotton Tree there was an old pinball parlour that we used to go to.
   
5. During one of the annual holidays I remember my mother saying that she saw the silhouette of two naked people in a tent.
6. My mother was a really basic cook. Our dinners almost always consisted of three different types of vegetables and meat. The vegetables were usually the frozen variety. I hated them and would try to eat them all combined with the meat.
7. When my mother and father were still together, Dad would go on shooting trips with his mates and/or one of his brothers. After the marriage fell apart, Dad would take my brother and I on some of the trips as well.
8. The site of these shooting trips was a property just south of the Queensland/New South Wales border. Dad and his mates had built a small iron cabin where they used to camp. Generally, my uncle's family stayed in the cabin while Dad and I, and sometimes Wayne, stayed in tents nearby. One night it rained and a huntsman spider kept coming into the tent. I was terrified of it and kept asking Dad to throw it outside.
9. During one of the shooting trips when I camped in the tent I woke up in the middle of the night dying to go to the toilet. If I remember correctly, I could hear a wild dog howling. I was scared to go out in the dark so I held on that night!
10. Also during one of these trips I watched my aunt make peanut biscuits in the cabin's old wood fired oven.
11. Occasionally Dad would allow me to use his little pellet air gun during these trips. I would shoot at the dragonflies that perched on a nearby barbed wire fence.
12. On one of these shooting trips (shit, I seem to remember these trips quite well, don't I) the men shot a wallaroo. I remember thinking how beautiful and dark the wallaroo was.
13. My brother or father would call the big bulls on the property "Ferdinand". Every time we drove past one, he would say, "There's Ferdinand".
14. I remember sitting in Dad's 4WD as we drove past the property owner's beautiful old house on the way to our campsite.
15. On one of the latter shooting trips, Shirley, my father's then girlfriend (now wife) accompanied us. I took a photo of her dressed in her "shooting trip finery" coming back from the camp toilet as a joke.
16. I also took another photo of my brother and one of our cousins felling saplings on a small hill close to our campsite.
    
17. Here's my final memory regarding these shooting trips. While out on one of the hunts, one of the men shot a kangaroo. Dad would not let me go near the carcass. I subsequently learnt that the reason Dad did not let me near the site was that the dead kangaroo had a joey in her pouch and that the men had killed the joey.
18. I felt proud of my good marks I received when I was in primary school.
    
19. When I was a junior student, there was a senior student at my high school who already had facial hair. One day he was kicked in the balls when mucking around with a friend. I remember him rolling around on the ground in agony.
20. My mother made an appointment for me to see the school's guidance counsellor regarding subject selection when I was entering grade nine. He indicated that shorthand would be a good subject for me to take because I could use it to take lecture notes later on when I went to uni.
21. When it was decided that I would leave school at the end of grade ten, my mother told me that there was no need to continue school because I would get married and therefore didn't need a high education. I wanted to leave at the end of grade ten because I didn't have many friends who were continuing on with their studies.
22. When I enrolled in Kelly Commercial College at the end of grade ten, I could not apply for TEAS (now Austudy) because my mother had given false information to the tax department in her tax return and she didn't want to be found out.
23. Whilst at Kelly Commercial College, I used one of Apple's original computers. I remember the computer's start up screen being a little smiling computer graphic. I thought it was cute.
    
24. During one of my classes at Kelly Commercial College, the teacher was discussing personal grooming with us. I remember the teacher singling out one of the students who had lovely finger nails.
    
25. On a camping trip to Bargara with my father and his friend Cliff's family, I remember sitting in the tent telling Dad about my perfect man.
26. I tried to have a similar discussion with my mother after talking to Dad about it. I think she told me that I was being too picky.
    
27. On a trip to Bribie Island with my mother and one of her friend's family, my tog's crotch area became filled with sand. I was very embarrassed and would not go into the nearby bush to get the sand out. I wanted my mother to take me to the nearest public toilets which would have meant driving there. My mother refused to take me. I was primary school age at the time
    
28. On another trip with my mother and this friend's family, we swam in a tea coloured lake (over on Moreton Island I think). It was quite a secluded spot. My mother and her friend were sunbaking topless. The friend's daughter and I decided to go topless as well. Despite being a pre-teen, I felt embarrassed to go topless. God, I was such a prude as a kid. I guess I still am.
    
29. After she had split with my father, my mother would hold card nights with her friends at the house. I remember one night venturing into the inner sanctum and my mother allowing me to have a small glass of Bacardi and Coke.
30. Whilst still in early primary school a small tornado made its way through Redcliffe. I remember going to someone's birthday party. The family's carport had been flattened by the little tornado.
31. My mother threw me a birthday party at my house when I was young. I had a bunch of friends come over and we played party games in the back yard.
32. Just after my mother left Dad and she, my brother and I were living in my uncle's house, I used too much toilet paper and clogged up the toilet. I remember getting in trouble from my mother for it.
33. In the lower section of my uncle's house, there was a locked door. The door led to a bedroom which led to the back yard of the house where my uncle and aunt lived. I remember the locked door being a bit of a mystery.
34. Across the road from my childhood home there was a corner store. My mother would allow my brother and I to buy a snack every afternoon after coming home from school. Sometimes I would also buy cigarettes and matches for my mother.
35. As a kid I would "shoot hoops" by using the clothes line in the back yard.
36. I also played tennis by hitting the tennis ball on the wall that separated our driveway and the neighbouring butcher's shop.
37. I remember my mother driving me home from primary school one day. A bolt of lightning hit the side of the road quite close to the car. We both shit ourselves.
38. My mother was in a single car accident when rushing around to her brother's house after hearing that my grandmother had taken ill. She lost control of the car when taking a bend and ploughed into a bus stop. She was alone at the time.
39. Just after she and Dad split, my mother used to take me down to the beach at Scott's Point. She must have spent hours out in the sun because I remember her being incredibly tanned at the time.
40. At some stage during primary school, my mother used to pick me up at the end of the school day. She would park on the street at the back of the school. I remember one of my fellow classmates going through a stage where he would say, "Hey Kym!" all the time. When I responded he would say, "Nothing!" This particular afternoon he caught me out with this game when I was walking out of the school yard to meet up with my mother. It was a fun game and I enjoyed the attention from a boy.
41. During one of our holidays spent only with Dad, my Dad drove my brother and me up to Cairns. I remember Dad wanting to leave early one morning. I sat in the back of the car watching the glow that the car's tail lights were making on the side of the road. My brother told me that when you could see the glow, it meant that a spirit of an Aboriginal person who had been buried under one of the trees on the side of the road was following the car.
42. During one of our Sunday day trips with Dad, Dad tested how fast his new Sigma could go. At the time we were just below the Queensland border in New South Wales. The road was signed with an unlimited speed limit so Dad took the car up to 140km/hr. I made the mistake of telling my mother about it after Dad dropped my brother and I home. She became enraged.
43. I used to go bike riding with my brother occasionally. He used to play the Space Invaders machine at a seaside fish and chip shop. One day while playing the game, my brother placed a cardboard box which he kept on the back of his bike on the machine because the sun was shining on the screen. When we went to leave, a couple of kids took over playing the game. I had to take the box off the game's screen because Wayne wanted to take it with him. The kids started yelling at me. My brother rode away with me hastily following up the rear.
44. I remember having a school girl crush on one of my brother's teenaged friends.
45. My brother had a stormy relationship with my mother after he left the family home to go out on his own. I remember my mother accusing my brother of making prank phone calls to the house when a caller would ring but hang up as soon as the phone was answered.
46. I remember my mother thinking that someone else (Ernie's ex wife or a friend my mother had a falling out with ... I'm not sure) used to do the same thing.
47. On the day that I first moved out of home at around eighteen years of age, my mother was going off at me.
48. Before my maternal grandmother passed away, we used to spend Christmases with my mother's extended family. After Nan passed away, my mother no longer wanted to celebrate Christmas so we spent it quietly at home. When she was still with my father, well before Nan passed away, I have the impression that my mother didn't like spending Christmases with Dad's extended family.
    
49. I used to like going roller skating as a kid. I went with a friend of mine, Jenny. Jenny was a few years older than me. She had a slight intellectual disability.
50. One summer as a young teen, I toyed with the idea of joining a junior ten pen bowling league. The day of the league sign ups, I chose to go with my brother, his mate and Jenny (who was my brother's mate's sister) for a drive up to Bribie Island. My brother already had his driver's license. While I wanted to join the ten pin bowling league, it was easier to go on the trip than to attend the league sign up because I only vaguely knew some of the other kids who were signing up and I didn't want to feel left out.
    

Wow! What a random set of memories these two "100 Childhood Memories" posts turned out to be. Unlike I first suspected, compiling this list has not been therapeutic at all. The only thing I really discovered, and I kind of knew this already, is that I do not like referring to my mother as Mum. Oh well! At least when put to the test, I was able to recall a hell of a lot of memories. That's got to be a good thing.