I remember my pre-school. It was one of those arty laid-back ones – the Montessori school- where our teachers were hippies who allowed our creative expression, and much to my horror, games of “kiss-catch” to be played on the lawn. I hated kissing boys. It was icky, wet, smelly and gross. It felt like a violation when they caught you and held you down and slobbered on your face. Eeuw. I decided that sitting next to the teachers while they watched, and drinking tea with them was a much better idea. So, apparently, that is how I spent much time at pre-school – drinking tea with the teachers.

 

One vivid memory I have is of the dinosaur stick-on game dilemma. This was a game I loved. I can’t remember it clearly, but there were felt dinosaurs you had to stick onto a background and for some reason I loved doing that. I don’t know how the “dilemma” came about, but I had 2 little male playmates, Dustin and another one who’s name I can’t remember, and one day they told me I had to choose who plays the dinosaur game with me – it could either be one or the other. And whoever I didn’t choose would never be friends with me again. I remember being very upset by this ultimatum. It was a truly awful moment for me. Something like that scene in Sophie’s Choice where Meryl Streep’s character has to choose which of her children gets to live and which get’s shot by the Nazi’s. (Okay, maybe not that bad, but it really deeply affected a sensitive little soul like me at that age.) I can’t remember who I chose. But I remember I lost a friend – maybe even both.

 

One of my absolute favourite things at pre-school was when one of the teachers would play her guitar and we would have sing-alongs. There was one about a turtle I used to love – it made me feel so good and happy. I think there were hand movements too. It was magical.

 

I don’t remember much more from the pre-school days.  

 

Then there was Tokai – my childhood home. The place I spent the first 14 years of my life. It was possibly one of the most idyllic settings for a childhood to take place – a peaceful cul-de-sac filled with neighbourhood kids of similar ages, quiet cobbled streets where we could ride our bicycles and play cricket in the street, and a backyard that joined to a communal field with a river running through it and huge willow trees on each side. It was a childhood paradise. I remember so many spring days spent with nets catching tadpoles in the river and putting them in an ice-cream container, watching them get bigger, grow legs, and finally lose their tails and become little frogs, hopping around, ready to be released back into nature.

 

Now thinking back to the rest of my childhood (mis)adventures, this is where I start to wonder if I was ever completely normal…

 

Odd story number 1: Swinging on the Rope

So with a number of tall trees and a river to swing over, as one can imagine, tree houses, planks and swinging ropes were erected. There was one rope in particular that was my favourite. It was a thick rope with a big knot tied at the bottom, on which we would sit when we swung. So basically your bum would be resting on the knot with your legs wrapped around the rope, and you would swing backwards and forwards, moving up and down slightly on the knot…

I remember that I used to love doing this… I mean I really used to love the feeling.. It was a feeling of such pleasure, with a warm sensation between my legs, and then a light-headedness and euphoria. I would swing for hours, never sure why it felt so great. I would swing until the crotch section of my pants was worn down and faded compared to the rest of the pants. I used to wonder why I enjoyed swinging so much.

Years later, when I was 13 and I had my first boyfriend, we had a passionate kissing session on his bed and started grinding our private parts over each other with our clothes on – so-called “dry humping.” Suddenly I got a warm feeling between my legs and a pleasure sensation I recognised… and that’s when I figured out what had been happening on the rope as a child…

 

Odd story number 2: Spying Games

My favourite game as a child was spying on people. This involved climbing trees, walls and hiding in bushes in order to get a good look at what people were doing and saying. I remember loving the thrill of sitting watching someone while they were totally oblivious to the fact that you were there and that they were being watched. The people I spied on were generally neighbours, neighborhood friends’ parents, or their siblings, or people gossiping in the road. I had no interest in what they said or did; my fun was purely in the “spying” – the art of being present while one’s presence is unknown. In one unfortunate spying incident, the skinny-dipping neighbours and their kids noticed me spying and the young boys became very angry and started swearing and shouting. I remember vowing never to spy again. But I probably did.

 

Odd story number 3: The Barbies

I think I had quite a good imagination as a young girl. My mother tells me how I used to have a large collection of small plastic farm animals. Apparently I would spend hours taking them out of their bucket and positioning them where I wanted and then playing some kind of game with them. In my memory I do have some recollection of enjoying arranging my animals in different ways – having the horses together in one area and the pigs together in another area, and then moving one animal over to another place to visit the cows, and imagining their conversation, and then arranging an encounter between a sheep and a horse, and then making them all run away when the tigers came to attack, or something like that… Well, apparently this went on for hours, after which I would pack all my animals back into the bucket and move them to another part of the house for the farm game to begin again.  

 

While this all seemed rather innocent, the barbie game is where things went a bit pear-shaped. This game did come a few years later, so granted there were some other, possibly hormonal, influences at play. Generally the barbie interactions were somewhat soap-opera inspired. Barbie would slap Ken for cheating on her, and then the other red-haired barbie would come onto the scene and fighting would ensue. Or Ken would bring barbie flowers and take her on a date… Things got interesting once when Ken and Barbies pants were pulled down, Barbie’s top pulled up, and I had them lying on top of each other. I remember Barbie had nipple-less breasts, and Ken and Barbie’s private parts were non-existent smooth plastic – both exactly the same. I still wonder where I had seen people pulling down pants and pulling up tops and putting their private parts against each other… It couldn’t have been on one of the midday soap opera’s our maid watched, as they were much too tame to show anything more than a passionate kiss.  Perhaps it had been on one of those nights when mom was working til 3am and dad had fallen asleep in front of the TV leaving me glued to the screen until the late night viewing hours. 

 

 

I did do some weird things as a child. I remember there was a café on the way home where mom always used to stop for milk and bread after fetching us from school. Usually we would ask for chocolate or sweetie pies, and often mom would say “No”, we couldn’t afford luxuries like that (even though we really could but my mother was a bit of a drama queen at times.). I remember often feeling very hard done by that we couldn’t even afford a chocolate on the way home from school. Then some days when she would say “okay,” we could have a chocolate today, I would say “No, it’s okay. I know we can’t really afford that and I don’t want to make us poor.” Then mom would look at me almost sarcastically and tell me “oh Anonymous, the poor matyr!” That used to hurt me. But that’s not the weird part yet.

One day when we were parked outside the  pharmacy next to the café and mom went in to get something. I decided to stay in the car. Then I climbed over the back seat onto the boot cover and started undressing until all I was wearing was my brown school panties and my brown school shoes and brown socks. I was sitting in a squat position and I think I was playing with my vagina. I really can’t remember exactly what I was doing but I know I was looking down at my crotch. I wasn’t doing this to attract attention at all. I honestly don’t know why I did it. But when I looked up people inside the pharmacy were standing at the door staring at me and pointing. Some of them looked quite shocked. I don’t know where my mom was, but I think I then got down from up there and sat back on my seat and put my clothes on. I think I was quite embarassed and never wanted to show my face at that pharmacy again. I think that’s why I have a vague memory of always telling my mom “I’ll wait in the car” when she went into the pharmacy for anything.