Memories are made of this (Childhood Memories)

Member Name: Joker25

Product:	Childhood Memories
Date:	22/02/06 (329 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I managed to humiliate myself thoroughly as a child.

Disadvantages: None - it's about me, damnit.

This will come as a surprise to none of you, but I was quite an eccentric child. Actually, we were an eccentric family (and when I say 'were', I mean 'still are', obviously). Not as eccentric as my great aunts however - they had a little curtain on pulleys that went across the TV that could swiftly be pulled shut any time any 'filth and nastiness' was encountered. Seemingly, it never occurred to them to change the channel or just turn the damn thing off - eccentric and not very bright; always a winning combination. However, I digress.

It's only comparatively recently as I've started to think about my childhood that I've realised that much of it was, well, unusual. The five choices that I've made are the ones that stick out in my memory, or are the ones that make me laugh when I think about them.


When I was roughly 6 or 7, 2 Americans came to stay with us. They were there for about 3 months I think. So far, so normal, but here's where the madness begins. One of the Americans was 6 foot 8 inches tall; the other was 6 foot 6 inches tall. One was called Billy somebody and the other was called Soup Campbell (I swear to God, I didn't just make that up) and he was black. To put this in perspective, there were so few black people in Belfast at this time that the neighbourhood kids used to follow Soup around, purely because they were so intrigued by him. They were both basketball players. What's unusual here is that absolutely no one in my family has any connection to basketball. To this day, I have no idea why on earth they stayed with us. Anyway, they were both lovely boys, and Soup, for reasons known only to himself, called me Miss Gussy. One sports day it happened that my parents couldn't attend (too busy corralling other random sports players to avail of our hospitality no doubt) so my mum asked Soup if he would go and cheer me on. My primary school was in quite a posh bit of Belfast, and was a very conservative establishment indeed. When other kids won races, the most that would be heard was a murmured 'Jolly well done actually my darling' from a proud parent. This was not the case when I took part in the skipping race. Oh no. At that stage, the congregated parents were treated to the sight of a 6 foot 8 black basketball player leaping up and down and shouting hysterically 'come on Miss Gussy - kick their asses damnit! Show them they're your b*tches!'


When deciding how to take the annual holiday each year, my parents flew in the face of conventional wisdom and decided against the traditional package holiday with all the comforts of home. Not for my folks the easy route to stress free and comfortable vacationing. They decided that the absolute best way to relax and unwind would be to bundle 2 children under 8 into the small cramped space of a Renault, hook up a small cramped caravan to the back and spend 5 days driving across western Europe to reach our eventual location in Italy (pause for a moment and think about the sheer number of times a 5 year old with a particularly short attention span - that's me - can ask 'are we there yet?' in 5 days. Frankly, I'm amazed I didn't get pitched out onto the autobahn). Anyway, one year we were running late for the ferry and so were a bit frantic to begin with. At the junction at the end of our street there was a right turn onto the main road, and another street opposite which sloped quite steeply downwards. As we were running late, dad pulled out sharply. Predictably, as the car turned right, the caravan came loose from the tow bar and ploughed merrily ahead down the hill, scattering kids on bikes and shoppers. There was absolutely nothing my parents could do but stand aghast with horror as the caravan took out a Volvo, a BMW and a Ford before knocking down a wall and coming to rest in a garden. That incident made the local papers. Amusingly, for a day and a half after that my brother would look around and helpfully point out at 5-minute intervals, 'don't worry, the caravan's still there dad'.


I'm a very gullible person, and I was an incredibly gullible child, a fact of which my parents took full advantage. My childhood home was just down the road from a milk processing plant that also sold milk, butter and eggs to the public as a wee sideline. For unknown reasons and despite the fact that we lived in a built up, urban area, I had taken the notion into my head that this plant was an actual farm (possibly because it was called 'Dale Farm Dairies') and that there were animals there. One day my dad and I had popped in to get butter. As we were leaving to walk home I happened to comment, 'gosh dad, it's strange that you never hear the cows in the farm mooing isn't it?' At this stage any responsible parent would have taken a God given opportunity to educate their child on the basics of milk distribution. My father however, whispered a quiet 'thank you' and grabbed the opportunity to mess with my head a little with both hands. With a completely straight face he told me that what had happened to the cows was a bit sad really - because the farm was so close to houses all the cows had to go for a special operation to have their moos removed before they came to live on the farm. I bought this hook, line and sinker. My dad even encouraged me to write a letter of complaint about it to the management, which I duly did. It wasn't until I was 16 or so that I uncovered the truth when I happened to be passing with a boyfriend. When I told him how awful it was about the poor cows with no moos he stopped dead, laughed for 5 minutes and then dumped me.


At Grammar school I was lucky enough to be lumbered with traintrack braces on my teeth. These were a nightmarish contraption with multicoloured elastic bands (my orthodontist was a sadist - she said, 'hey, we'll put the rainbow bands on shall we? They're so cool, all the kids want them', and because my gullibility knows no bounds I answered, 'really? Let's have 'em then.') These weapons of torture required periodic tightening, for which I had to get out of school at lunchtime. There wasn't a bus directly to the orthodontists so I had to get a bus into town, a different bus back out of town and then walk the last wee bit. On this occasion I went to sign out of school for the afternoon and as I was doing so idly chewed on the end of my pen. If it had been a Bic ballpoint or similar, everything would have been grand. However, it's me we're talking about, of course it wasn't a Bic - it was a bloody great fountain pen with a huge clip on the end of it. Obviously, this got stuck in my braces. I tried to remove it in the toilets, but this proved impossible without the aid of heavy duty cutting equipment and a couple of trained welders. I then had to endure the shame of spending over an hour on public transport with a bright pink fountain pen jutting at a jaunty angle from my mouth. My orthodontist did eventually remove it, but not before she'd taken a photo of it in situ for her wall.


At my primary school we occasionally had non-school uniform days to raise money for charity, and one was scheduled for the last day of Christmas term when I was eleven. That morning I had asked my mum what she thought I should wear before she went off to work. She was a bit distracted and replied that I should wear something 'nice and pretty'. Well, boy did I take that idea and run with it. When I arrived in school I chatted away to my friends (all of whom were sensibly attired in jeans and jumpers) and started work. Before long I noticed that not only was my own teacher standing beside me staring, open mouthed, but that there were also quite a few other members of staff there, all of whom seemed to have lost the power of speech. The reason for this? My choice of attire had been; a pair of my mum's 5 inch black stilettos, a red satin nightie (again, belonging to my mum) that could best be described as 'a wee bit slutty', a dark brown bearskin coat that had belonged to my grandmother and a hat with a not inconsiderable amount of imitation fruit on top. Amazingly, the incident passed off almost entirely without comment and Social Services didn't become involved.

(Also posted on Ciao by me)

3&12, 2010

Summary: Thanks for the memories.