Summer is a bitch. It’s hot, it’s uncomfortable … also public nudity is still frowned upon.

It’s that time of year again, where Wellington has two sun-drenched days and a ‘state of summer’ is unanimously declared. Never mind that it’s only just October, never mind exams are looming like a guillotine, it’s freaking summer! Get outside, you pasty git.

Perhaps I’m getting off on the wrong foot here.

But summer does have a tendency to announce itself unexpectedly, generally by burning poor unfortunate souls as they go about their business. You know the one, that tingling sensation you can’t quite find, the uncomfortable warmth on the back of your legs. (But is it a burn? It’s a burn, right? It’s pink enough, do I use cream? Where’s the fucking aloe vera!?) But after the initial panic of the Virgin Burn summer delivers
in small, secret doses to her victims, the novelty wears off. So much so that people forget they were burnt. Until they shower.

Ohai, summer! Didn’t see you thar!

It wasn’t always like this, feeling as if summer was more of a chore than a state of mind. During our earlier years, the first week of October simply meant there were a few last days of freedom before Term Four commenced and summer dreams were unceremoniously crushed by ‘no hat no play’. You’d try bargaining your 24-pack of Faber-Castell pencils, a delectable item of your packed lunch, or even help with cheating on the Basic Facts test, all just to borrow some kid’s measly spare hat for 45 minutes. You know you
shouldn’t—your mother keeps warning you this child is a breeding ground for cooties. But the little snot doesn’t relent. Even though you assure him it’s not possible to wear two hats at once, he does so. Just to prove a point, the bastard. And so you’re left sitting awkwardly on the concrete, adjusting your backside because it’s gone numb.

At high school, ‘no hat no play’ is a thing of the past; an ancient relic dug up to name and shame your friends. But summer did mean exams, a fact that transformed into an ominous feeling of dread, despair, and hopelessness… which continued into tertiary study. Where tiny children run free on beaches and begin to draft the all-important annual letter to Sandy Claws, fractious students from ages 15 and up are scurrying about libraries and crying in computer laboratories. Surfacing for air and food, students are often blinded by how unnaturally bright summer is, furiously blinking to avoid the glaring sun.

Students are often victims of the Virgin Burn.

When you get down to it, summer can be quite an awkward three months, filled with discomfort and pity-filled glances at pregnant women waddling around Wellington. I saw one in Farmers over Christmas, mere days from celebrating the miracle of life. Doting husband frolicked about the store in airy shorts and a singlet, prancing like a tit in front of the revolving fan. Hair sticking up, eyes wild with irritation, dear wife calmly explained if he did not stop, she would shove the fan up his arse and force their unborn son to
play netball.

I think she knew about ‘no hat no play’ too.

So this puberty thing lasts about a week right?

Standing at Mobil late one winter evening hopping about with my hands stuffed in my pockets, I noticed a crowd was starting to gather. I had just told the attendant via intercom quite loudly that I was in dire need of a four-pack of Cottonsofts. Avoiding eye contact with other patrons, the man returned with four—FOUR—bags of toilet rolls, off-loading them into my arms as I stood flabbergasted at his stupidity.

Christ, it was like suffering sex education all over again.

The introduction to the ‘birds and the bees’ is a moment none of us can bleach from our mind. For me, it all began in the summer of 1999. One fateful afternoon, Mum called me inside from the backyard as I was busy somersaulting on the trampoline, resembling some form of crippled gymnast. Sitting down on the couch next to Mum, she matter-of-factly began the ins and outs of baby-making and bed-shaking, which she calmly referred to as ‘intercourse’, a phrase which rocketed to Number One on my list of ‘words that shouldn’t be said aloud’. After a millennium, brain comfortably numb with new information, I stumbled in a daze back outside, assuring Mum that “yeah, I’m okay. I’m just… you know… going out here now…”

I was not okay.

Compared to other stories, my introduction to reproduction wasn’t that bad. Considering Mum literally opened with the phrase “when a man and woman love each other very much,” I did pretty well. Sadly, after the wide-eyed initial realisation I was not the Immaculate Conception, I zoned out before I learned about the specifics of sex and had to muster up the courage to sheepishly ask Mum three months later where babies came from.

Relax, it only gets worse. For children, discovering how you came to exist isn’t bad enough—parents also have the nerve to quietly pull you aside and mention your body is going to change: “oh, that’s nice, I always wanted to be a bit taller.” But what parents don’t realise is that no amount of pep-talks or wise words of encouragement can prepare a kid for the reality of puberty. Because let’s face it, the wonderment of adulthood aside, puberty was a miserable and degrading experience. Nothing ever worked out for us, even our desired growth spurts backfired. Limbs grew as if independent from our own body so we ended up resembling gangly, gawky monkeys. Why? Because there’s SO much hair, why is there hair? This makes no sense. I’m only going to spend the rest of my life waxing it to death.

Like most teenagers, I spent my days in a frump, willing puberty to simply do its thing and fuck off. Much like the Mobil attendant who handed me four bags of toilet rolls and smiled. Don’t smile at me, you dick. The awkwardness of sex education aside, I learnt valuable lessons amidst my misery, such as never underestimating the importance of an emergency tampon. The male equivalent I am led to believe is the trick of hiding a sneaky boner. But still, back to the matter at hand: how the fuck do I walk away with my dignity intact while carrying four bags of toilet rolls?

I think you should come over to Myspace so I can Twitter your Facebook

Since the dawn of Windows 95, students have found themselves scrambling at the eleventh hour to deliver their assignments on time. Sneaking along the corridor, mentally kicking themselves for not doing this earlier, students question how exactly they woke up, prepared to write a research essay, but ended up killing six hours on Facebook?

Perhaps the blame lies with Generation X. Doomed by the Baby Boomers to be the generation that would never amount to anything except plaid shirts, MTV, and a sense of entitlement, Gen X just had to prove everyone wrong and capitalise on the development of the World Wide Web. This has cursed Generation Y with the power to reduce grade averages with a few simple clicks.

Like most of Gen Y, I don’t remember spending a great deal of the nineties trawling various web pages. Grades for primary school assignments were hinged on actually visiting the school library, which always smelt like stale bread, wet dog, and socks. The first decade of my life was internet-free. I want to say it was a peaceful time but I don’t remember much of how I spent my spare moments, except that I dedicated several afternoons of my school week to softball, netball, cricket, and running.

This is no longer the case.

Instead of pretending to be athletic, the internet was heavily abused by Gen Y in high school for Wikipedia and social networking sites—an anti-social means of communication and ridicule. Furious after school conversations over MSN, where hotgurrrrl13 mercilessly flirted with sexcboiiii16, were replaced with Myspace and its inbred cousin, Bebo. Already plagued by acne, puberty, and life in general, teenagers were subjected on both sites to the cruel practice of ‘Top Friends’, being tagged in photo albums of drunken exploits, and the soul-crushing Bebo experience of being dumped as ‘The Other Half’.

Poor unfortunate souls.

Now we have Facebook! It’s slightly nicer, better looking, and often the perfect Austen gentleman until it explains “Oops! Something went wrong!” It’s also easier to watch the lives of your friends, frienemies, relatives, and one-night-stands fall apart dramatically through status updates. While Facebook does paint society in a lovely shade of schadenfreude, it has an annoying knack of eating up all our time, time I am sure we used better before the World Wide Web became a black hole of grades, assignments, and lives.

Facebook aside, I recently tallied my internet ‘most-visited-sites’ and came back with Facebook (shocking), YouTube, Overheard in New York, The Oatmeal, and Lamebook, which is like Facebook (again, shocking), only it focuses on the most spectacular of awkward social fails. But with several assignments due in a week and exams fast-approaching, I’m boycotting Facebook. Lying on my couch, I can’t imagine how on Earth I wasted six hours on this website…

Ooh! A witty page with an amusing title I can relate to: ‘when sluts hate other sluts for being sluts’. I must like this.

Shut up J.K. Rowling, just shut up!

Ten years ago, making any attempt to disrespect the House of J.K. Rowling and her fantastical world of wizards, Quidditch, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was a move towards a public flagellation. Sure, there were children who disliked the books, but I remember that at the time, most would rather shrivel up and be swallowed by the earth than read any book. Talks of a movie flitted about the place soon after the publication of the first novel, adding to the excitement of kids across the globe. But as the final film approaches release, is anyone else getting bored?

Like most children, it was my teacher who introduced my class to the intriguing realm of Harry Potter. Dedicating an entire afternoon to reading the first chapter to a squabble of grotty nine-year-olds, my teacher only had to read one page before we were hooked on diabetus Uncle Vernon, paunchy Dudley, and Aunt Petunia, who I imagined looked like a Skeksis in human form. But then there was Harry—scrawny, scruffy, the weediest of kids. You just know he was picked last for everything but his scar. J.K. Rowling was good, you have to admit. From the beginning, you wanted to know more about the Boy who Lived.

The first novel ended with the spectacular introduction to Lord Voldemort and a hint that perhaps in future, these novels could be darker. This was the case with the Chamber of Secrets and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Major characters already well-established, Rowling had more of a free range with how they interacted and what horrid situations Harry Potter got his poor pal Ron Weasley into. Hermione Granger appeared to loosen up by the third novel, even punching greasy Draco Malfoy in the face. Introduced to such things as Dementors, Bertie Botts, and even Dobby the House Elf, there was so much promise, so much we still had to learn about Tom Riddle, Slytherin, and oh-so-awesome Professor Snape.

Then she had to write the fourth novel and ruin my life.

I was sitting at my desk one afternoon when She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named spied my copy of the Goblet of Fire. I was several chapters from the end. Suddenly she blurted, “Cedric Diggory dies!” It was in this brief moment that Harry Potter became a little less magical. Life over, I dragged myself through the fifth and sixth novels (you know, the one where Harry became an emo kid because he defeated Voldemort, still wasn’t a prefect, and Won-won was getting it on with Lavender Brown?), I reluctantly read the seventh novel over the summer of 2008, and promptly felt like writing a polite letter to Rowling asking for my decade back.

Over the years, parents have been subjected to countless Harry Potter-themed parties, consoled children after the traumatic death of Dumbledore, and dealt with the fact it took seven novels, eight films, and seven Horcruxes for Rowling to explain that Voldemort simply became an unholy shit storm of dark magic because he wasn’t loved as a child. I’ll see the final film (probably) but only in tribute to the first three instalments, where the magic of Harry Potter really came into its own.

It could be worse, I suppose, Stephanie Meyer has way more to answer for.

This is like my last supper; let’s have McDonalds!

At an early age, I decided my mother gave the best hugs in the entire history of mankind. Not that I was a promiscuous child, but I have hugged a fair few people, enough to know that their hugging styles paled in comparison. But as I watch her being prepped for a gastric bypass, I can’t help but think that following the dramatic weight loss expected over the coming 12 months I will be cruelly robbed of ‘mum cuddles’.

Being about as graceful and delicate as an overweight rhinoceros during my younger years, it was not unusual for me to get into tricky situations, like dangling by my overalls from a tree while gathering pine cones. My arse, back, and head served primarily as means of breaking my fall. But, no matter what I scraped, where I fell, or how I done goofed, a hug from Mum sorted everything. One day, I remember sitting in a small classroom after my knee somehow made it through a school window. I was scolded by a teacher and mortified that it was my bloody knee that managed to break a window five feet above the ground; then mum arrived and simply looked at me like the moron I was before giving me a damn hug. See? Problem solved.

But she’s sitting now, getting blood tests and arranging her dinner for this evening. For anyone who has ever been in hospital, the food is akin to shite on toast. Forced to suffer the degrading practise of nil-by-mouth, mum is given the option of lentil soup or broth, which draws us to the hard, cold facts of a gastric bypass: you never get to eat like your average tubby git ever again.

After years of spontaneous noms and between-meal smackerels, mum will never again stomach Mars Bars, Tunnocks Tea Cakes, or cheesecakes. She often mentions that one of her favourite moments in life was waddling, heavily pregnant with me, through Liverpool to Marks & Spencer, purchasing Fruitfuls and full-fat cream to mix and scoff before throwing up like all normal pregnant women. So when stuck with lentil soup or broth for her Last Supper, you can imagine she’s a bit miffed.

We’ve been here an hour now, meeting nurses, dieticians and physiotherapists and while the lentil soup is an ongoing issue, the team is marvellous. A buzz of excitement is in the air as she goes down to x-rays and an ECG, where mum explains “they’re going to squeeze all my wobbly bits”. This is the first day of the rest of her life and with a nervous smile she tells me we’re going shopping in Melbourne. She’s happy and for that, I don’t mind sacrificing my mum cuddles.

But with a room to herself and a television screening Cartoon Network (“Is there Invader Zim? I like that one?”), Atticus and I agree the physiotherapy might be more challenging. Sitting nervously in an armchair while a physiotherapist details ways in which she could “get fit” post-mangled stomach, mum was politely asked what her current exercise routine was like:

“I don’t.”

Relax. I’ll just cut a bit here and … Oh shit.

Birthdays seem to go hand in hand with relatives trotting out photographs of your younger self you wish did not exist. Forced to relive those mortifying moments when your parents were still the dictators of your wardrobe, you notice an unsightly trend as each image flips before you.

Who the fuck has been cutting your hair?

I have never got on with my hair and its constant mockery of my life began as a baby, when I would lie on my back and roll around the floor in an attempt to be athletic. This act was to have a severe impact on my dignity because, on the joyous day of Baby’s First Hair Cut, the hairdresser was met with an unsightly bald patch on the back of my bulbous noggin. Funnily enough, I have only ever seen this phenomena one other time—a local stray cat rubbing his ass on concrete. Said cat was bald in three days.

It seems hair only exists to scorn us. At age six, I retaliated to its misgivings by strategically placing a wad of gum in the curls behind my left ear as we drove around one Saturday afternoon. Sticking it to the man, as it would seem. My feeling of sheer triumph was short-lived, replaced with trepidation once it became clear that no, the gum was not going to cooperate. And, as my mum went to the kitchen drawer to retrieve a pair of scissors, it dawned on me that my hair had won. Again.

After that unfortunate incident, I spent three months growing out a kinky scrap of hair that stuck out in all directions. On purpose, I’m sure. So at age 12, I took drastic measures and opted for the pixie cut. After a month, once the novelty of mohawks and liberty spikes wore off, I was left with a curly mop of hair that refused to cooperate. Too lazy to blow dry or brush it, I spent my early adolescence looking like a hobbit. Clearly I had forgotten how much this irritated me because I cut it all off again at the arrogant age of 17. As I restyled it back into a mohawk, a skill that comes in handy, I jokingly thought I would make an excellent Harry Potter.

To date, I have dressed as Harry Potter three times.

It was clear something needed to be done about Hair before it turned me into a walking shrine to J.K Rowling. I made a vow to grow it out, wash it, tend to it, and whisper sweet nothings between brushings in the hopes it would stop being such a raging bitch and sit right for once. It’s a battle, I’ll admit, growing out hair. Hair’s latest trick is getting caught in car doors but looking back on the recent photo albums, I’m glad A-Typical Nineties Hair has been laid to rest.

But whatever you do, don’t mention The Bob. I’m yet to forgive my four-year-old self for wanting that one.

It is understood that once you are in a reasonable state of consciousness in the morning, you check your emails. While most of them are updates from Facebook or spam suggesting herbal enhancers, occasionally an email with an innovative subject line will find its way through to your account. Last Tuesday was such a morning and I found myself staring at a message titled ‘holy fuck shit’.

With an overactive imagination, and still half asleep, ‘holy fuck shit’ led my brain to the extremes of zombie apocalypse, or the ability to clone dinosaurs—which will happen one
day, mark my words. But after reading the linked article and learning the Triceratops never existed, I ascertained ‘holy fuck shit’ was an acceptable lead-in.

As it turns out, Triceratops is an immature form of a Torosaurus, which is ‘palaeontology’ for some dinosaur we couldn’t give a rat’s ass about. Seriously, Torosaurus sounds like a dance move combining arm flailing and ghetto stomping, reserved for tragic spinsters at their cousins’ wedding. But scientists have realised the Triceratops’ skull shape shifts, or for all you Poké-masters out there, ‘evolves’, into the skull of an adult Torosaurus, a three-horned less-than-amazing Triceratops. Scientists are basing this knowledge on the fact no juvenile fossils of Torosaurus have been uncovered.

Dear palaeontologist, a word of advice: might I suggest digging deeper before taking my Triceratops? It was a pretty crappy thing to do. Even Microsoft Word doesn’t recognise
‘Torosaurus’. I think you may have your facts wrong. Windows XP aside, Bill Gates is nothing if thorough… Sort of. Also, I imagine you look like Ross Geller so if you’re ‘on a break’, don’t take it out on Triceratops.

A glorious, prehistoric beast, the Triceratops was best known to children as that arrogant jaundice three-horn ‘Cera’ from The Land Before Time. You know, that one that acted as the fun police and crushed the dreams of her fellow adventurers en route to the Great Valley. Despite Littlefoot’s mother saving her ass, Cera was still a righteous mole. After sitting through umpti-billion Land Before Time sequels, prequels, and tragic spin-offs, I take great pleasure in the fact she no longer exists. Shame Spielberg, that’s what you get for failing to clone dinosaurs after Jurassic Park. You’ve had over a decade. We want some action here, pal.

But like so many other items ripped away from us by science, evolution, and all things politically correct, the Triceratops is the latest casualty in what I am convinced is a war against our childhood. It starts small, the first casualty being red-tipped cigarette Spaceman Candy Sticks. But oh no, this wasn’t enough and soon escalated with some ass-tronomist just having to snatch away Pluto.

Let’s look on the bright side though, dinosaurs evolve like Pokémon and Littlefoot, the Brontosaurus that could, has finally his revenge on Spielberg.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, the Brontosaurus isn’t real either!?

Attempting to blend in with four-year-olds is difficult on most days, but trying to achieve this feat in Toyworld is next to impossible. For one, they tend to cry more. Moving away to play ‘kill, boff, marry’ with the limited retro editions of Barbie, the latest tea party accessories catch my eye. They do not include the Easy Bake Oven.

Furrowing my brows together to make a serious face, I thought about the lack of Easy Bake Ovens. I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever seen one in Toyworld. Or New Zealand. On the three playdates I was invited to, no excited child ever squealed “let’s bake with my Easy Bake Oven!” Fun times surely would have followed, but the sad fact is, aside from Google image and YouTube, I’ve never actually seen an Easy Bake Oven.

An icon of childhood, the Easy Bake Oven has its own history page on the Hasbro website. The first thing you notice is that it now resembles a microwave more than a miniature industrial oven from the 1960s. After spending the coming decades changing the appearance of the Easy Bake from a pea-green cube with a faux stovetop to a state-of-the-art kitchen appliance, Hasbro introduced more recipes for children to cook, such as poptarts, french fries and sandwiches.

See, here’s where the confusion sets in. Turns out the Easy Bake Oven is actually an oven, not a Playskool Kitchen Set with plastic cooking utensils and bacon strips. Until quite recently I was under the impression the Easy Bake Oven ‘cooked’ pishy cake mix with a 60W light bulb. Shockingly, I was not interested in getting such a lame excuse for a toy. But apparently, this is not what happens, and the oven actually cooks cakes, desserts and biscuits with a high-powered heating element.

The last reason—the fact it cooks food with a heating device—probably meant I was never going to get an Easy Bake Oven as a child. The amount of times I either burn dinner, undercook pancakes or set the element on fire by accidently spilling cat food on it mean should I ever get my hands on an Easy Bake Oven, I could probably turn my home into Chernobyl. With a definite health hazard attached to the oven, this means I only want it more.

I can’t help but feel I have missed out on something truly incredible by waking up each Christmas and birthday without an Easy Bake Oven. I blame my culinary shortfalls and tendency to bring fire—literally—to the kitchen on the fact I was unable to flex my little chef hands during the nineties. Forever doomed to nuke my food in a microwave, I realise I have made the ultimate Easy Bake sacrifice, but I have not burnt down my house.

Yet.

Staring at the ownership papers of my new car, I find myself briefly entertaining the sting of guilt; I don’t miss my Nissan. A trusty and reliable steed, it was the butt of most jokes among my friends:

“Bro, is that your car?”

“NO! … Actually, yeah. Sorry. But look, the dashboard’s digital! … Points for effort?”

As it turns out, a fender bender is akin to a death sentence for all vehicles born prior to 1994. But with a generous settlement from my insurance company, the search for a replacement began. It was not easy, and involved Mrs Bennet taking my money to Turners where she was drawn into a crazed bidding frenzy with the locals. After spending nine days exhausting every possible excuse to avoid public transport, I got desperate and purchased a Mazda from TradeMe. The purchase was purely methodological; it consisted of me staring at its picture for three minutes, wondering what I would look like behind the wheel. The jury is still open on whether this is the most irresponsible thing I’ve done but with four doors and a tape deck? Ladies and gentlemen, we have upgraded.

While the Mazda has a CD player, it’s living on life support. Jammed until quite recently, I went medieval and shoved bits of plastic cutlery in its stupid face. After a high-pitched screech from the electronics, and a heartfelt apology from me, the hostage CD slowly slipped out. 3 Doors Down? Oh, seriously? I replaced it with a mix CD, but being useless, the stereo only works sporadically, starting at an undetermined point anywhere on the CD. I learned this after turning up the volume during peak hour traffic only to forget and be rudely awakened six minutes later on the Terrace off-ramp… by Rammstein.

Scheiße.

It was halfway through a miniature cardiac arrest when I realised I had been blessed with a tape deck. The Nissan just had a hole, so the tape deck feels like a gift from the Almighty. That afternoon I searched my room for old tapes, only finding Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash, which I quickly determined was probably not purchased for me. But being a child of the nineties, I know this problem is easily solved; two bits of cellotape and you can record tracks direct from the radio.

I don’t know about anyone else, but from the floor of my room on a lazy afternoon, I felt like a spy on a covert operation as I pressed ‘Rec’ and ‘Play’ at the same time, dubbing most of the tracks from Channel Z. Like a player in the game of espionage, I huddled up next to the speaker and kept track of upcoming playlists for several radio stations. But I was a twitchy kid, not Rob Fleming, so naturally I got bored and went to get food… In actual fact, I missed most of the tracks I wanted to dub. My nineties tapes were largely uneventful affairs.

Kind of wish I hadn’t chucked out Hanson now….

As a former dog person, a fair amount of my childhood was dedicated to laughing at the misfortune of my neighbours’ portly feline, particularly when it attempted anything akin to running. But now sitting comfortably on the settee with three overweight balls of kitty squeezed onto the one cushion beside me, I can’t help but wonder—how the fuck did this happen?

Adjusting from athletic canine owner to apathetic cat minder was a bit of a culture shock. When I was 14, Mrs Bennet decided, without proper consultation, to rescue a timid kitten from the Cats Protection League. Adding insult to injury, a then-12-year-old Atticus decided to name the ridiculous creature ‘Princess Tinkerbell’. For the next six weeks, we spent hours attempting to coax Princess Tinkerbell, or my no-nonsense moniker of ‘Kitty’, out from under beds, in cupboards, and behind drawers. Clearly, like a first-born child, your first cat is an experiment. A second cat was needed to ensure we were not failures as parents.

‘Princess Mittens of the Cabbage Patch’ was a welcomed addition to the household, even if Atticus was trusted to name it. Again. Another rescued animal, Cabbage, hails from the Maori Focus Unit at Rimutaka Prison and spends most of her time attempting to escape out of windows at home. Ha! Irony! But after an unfortunate encounter with an SUV, Cabbage became that ‘three-legged cat from down the road’. Sure, we still love the adorable little moron, but let’s face it; she’s not exactly a ‘real’ cat.

In the years that followed, Mrs Bennet added ‘Daisy’, ‘Thackeray Binx’, ‘Gizmo’, ‘Annie’, and ‘Princess Alice from the Palace’ to our itty bitty kitty committee. Daisy and Gizmo both have a strong aversion for plastic bags while Binx is our intellectually stunted uncle we don’t talk about. Annie’s my clever little protégée and has an obsession with putting red McDonalds straws in her water bowl. And Alice from the Palace? Well, I took one look at the little bastard and informed Mrs Bennet Alice was actually an ‘Alex’. It wasn’t until I pointed out his testicles that Mrs Bennet sat back with a decided “Oh, shit.”

He now leads a comfortable life under the name ‘Mr Bingley’.

But looking back, it wasn’t enough to label us crazy cat ladies. Certainly we don’t use the cats as missiles or let them roam free. No sir, they are lazy house cats who expect regular feedings and affection. Sigh. Geoffrey, however, was the tipping point. A scraggly stray who hung around the property, Mrs Bennet began feeding him a little over two years ago. His weight improved but his behaviour was atrocious, often swiping our delicate female felines with his dirty paws. After explaining to my mother that “No! Thou shalt not neuter the resident stray!” I returned home one evening to find poor Geoffrey had sneakily undergone the procedure. To make matters worse, his owners gave him a hot pink collar. Yes, owners.

You know, I’m willing to bet a dog person doesn’t have to deal this kind of shit.

“Sometimes I half-expect to see George Clooney in scrubs…”

Monday mornings in winter never fail to garner a collective groan from audiences. Why? Well, perhaps it’s the difficult task of getting from your bed to your shower, perhaps it’s strategically getting on underwear without toppling, or perhaps it’s that panicked five minute couch dive as you search for your elusive car keys. Whatever the reason, society still manages to maintain a scrap of dignity as they stride into their lectures, clutching an extra shot of latte as they furiously try to remember if they turned off their headlights.

This is not the case if you manage to land yourself in hospital by 9.53am.

Maintaining a sense of decorum in a crisis has never been my forte. I excel at making an ass of myself which is why, at 9.27am on a Monday, I found myself immobilised and slightly doped in the back of a Wellington Free Ambulance. Staring at the virginally white ceiling of the station wagon, I sunk into the black abyss of misery; “Why me?” I thought, “Why is this always happening?”

For the record, I don’t make a habit of getting myself into car accidents for the thrills. Actually, it wasn’t even my fault, which pleased both the police and but more importantly, my insurance company. But as I turned off a roundabout I came face-to-face with a car going the wrong way. Moving over to the left, my car was jolted forward as the vehicle behind became more acquainted with my bumper. Noooo! Body lurching forward in my seat, my seatbelt abruptly stopped, sending my early-morning brain nestled in my skull firing back into my headrest. This was only hours after I watched my England crushed unfairly by Germany and that Miroslav Klose. Bloody Wunderkind.

So I did what any other sleep-deprived female would do: cried. After exchanging numbers with both drivers, I had calmed down enough to realise I didn’t have my cellphone, I’d hit my head, and I was wearing yellow pyjamas with green turtle prints. By the time the ambulance arrived, I wished I’d stayed in bed. And when the fire brigade got there, I wished I was dead. Turns out there is nothing more mortifying than wearing turtle pyjamas, a neck collar, and a head brace while being strapped (literally) onto a wooden board to be hoisted onto a stretcher. Adding insult to injury, it was right about now I had to politely ask a paramedic to itch my nose for me.

After receiving a charity dose of morphine en route to Accident and Emergency, I decided sleep was the best course of action. Stumbling my way through giving my personal details, I lay paralysed on a bed. Then I realised I also wasn’t wearing a bra or underwear and I desperately needed to pee. I cried. After Mrs Bennet arrived late (because apparently feeding the cats still remains a priority) and the x-rays were checked out, I went home where the rest of my day consisted of sleep, broken every two hours by Mrs Bennet graciously making sure I was not dead or comatose.

Dignity is a funny thing. I’m not sure I ever had it. But life is so much more satisfying if you can strike fear in the hearts of Lexus owners when you park a fender bender near them.

“I’m only playing if I can be the banker…” “But you cheat!

Wandering aimlessly around Courtenay Central is a dangerous pastime. Last Thursday, as Reading Cinemas staff finished scuffing the renegade popcorn kernels under the seats, I found myself engaged in conversation with a valiant fanboy, my companion, about the ins and outs of hand-painted, ever-popular, never-beaten Lord of the Rings board games.

And I spent 20 minutes desperately wanting to ask if he was good at snakes and ladders.

Because when it comes down to it, that’s as far as my knowledge of board games goes. A child’s sport, kept aside for a rainy day, I can assure you Hasbro and Milton Bradley only ever graced my lounge floor if I became frustrated with children’s programming and was unable to sneak outside to frolic in the rain. Align this fact with the honest truth I am terrible at board games and you have a child who saw rainy days here, there, and everywhere as the bane of her existence.

Skill, they say, leads to becoming the master of draughts. Patience if one wants to succeed in the lost art of Jenga, or perhaps sheer dumb luck in the mystery of winning snakes and ladders. Actually, I always liked Jenga, but snakes and ladders only served one purpose in childhood; the valuable lesson, ‘life isn’t fair’. I think we’ve all been smacked on the arse by that arrogant snake on square 99.

Jenga aside, my dwindling talent for board games puts me to shame. One birthday, and I really would love to know who did this to me, I became the proud owner of ‘KerPlunk’. Similar to Jenga, but with marbles and sticks (hence the louder cacophony of fail when you eventually lost), KerPlunk quickly joined the growing pile of games titled ‘Do Not Want’.

Over the years, the collection grew: Connect Four, Mouse Trap, Ludo, Guess Who, Monopoly, Candy Land, and of course, Hungry Hungry Hippos, which was all fun and games until it got violent. The hippo food doubles as BB gun pellets, did you know? I tried the games of skill: Go, Backgammon… and Battleship. I’m not entirely sure whether Battleship is a game of skill but I never quite understood its purpose. It was in the school ‘rainy day’ cupboard I only wanted to play so I could exclaim, “You sunk my battleship!” To this date, I am yet to utter this line in its correct context.

There may be hope just yet. After diligently abandoning his friends to talk with two none-the-wiser women about the art of Lord of the Rings and intergalactic models for board games, the fanboy explained there are workshops…Workshops!? So, fervent Wellingtonians pay to learn how to hand-paint models and assemble Helms Deep for a board game about the one ring to rule them all, and in the darkness, bind them?

God. You can understand now why we must suffer so many Middle Earth jokes.

“What the hell is this? I ordered vodka, not ICE!”

Student night. Isn’t it beautiful?

Actually, it probably isn’t. Close to midnight on a Wednesday I can be found eating an amalgam of lunch, mid-afternoon snackage, and dinner after work at Wellington’s best kept Chinese food takeout. Between inhaling what I would term ‘questionable meat’ and wolfing down a vanilla coke, a gross spectacle of human behaviour plays out before me. With dinner and a free show, it’s no wonder I keep going back.

The first week of dinner at the Chinese holy land was during the semester break. Wide-eyed first years began toddling through around midnight, mascara running and boyfriends lacking, in search of greasy food. Unnecessary Maccas has nothing on this place. A friend and I watched in amazement as they spent ten minutes ordering their food. In the end, the smallest of the group removed her shoes in an effort to increase her ordering capabilities. I’m still wondering how this helped. Encased in sheer pantyhose, her mission of leaving the establishment was hindered as she crossed the floor, slipping near my table. I stifled a giggle.

“Oy! Watch out for this floor!” she called to her friends, “It’s like, dangerous. A health hazard!”

So perhaps student night isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The following week, as I ate something I wasn’t entirely sure of, a young man staggered in, possibly unaware he was even in a Chinese takeout. He sat down at our table and inquired as to whether my friend was going to eat her food. I cupped mine protectively, slowly drawing it back towards me. After explaining that yes, she did intend to eat her combination fried rice, he appeared deflated… Only to ask if he could watch her eat it. That night I learned a valuable lesson; watching food consumption is just as effective as eating it for a man with a serious case of the munchies.

My views of student night I had before I started at Victoria were diminishing. One week, a shaggy man waltzed in with his skateboard, screaming about how fucking awesome he was and how great all the food looked. I couldn’t disagree with him; questionable meat has become my favourite dish. But he was acting rather strangely, and after an intense discussion about what illicit substances this man could be on, we decided we probably knew too much and avoided eye contact with him.

During my first year, I spent Wednesdays crawling from bar to bar and dragging my sorry arse into STAT193 on a Thursday afternoon. On Wednesdays, I rejoiced at my pay cheque hitting my account at midnight, allowing me to race around Wellington and purchase all manner of terrible vodka-fruity mixed concoctions for a reasonable price. But after seeing the other side of student night, with its drunken antics and washed-out make-out, Wednesday just means one thing:

“Hi! Can I grab two choices of noodles… Aaaaand two of the questionable meat at the front?”

“Just relax now, it’ll feel like a bee sting…”
“Nooooo! I hate bee stings!”

Phobias. Let’s face it, they’ve run away from us. It’s possible today to harbour an irrational fear of anything in existence. I’ll admit there are phobias out there that cover the obscure and the ridiculous; fear of old people, bridges, being out of mobile range. But c’mon, surely we can justify our inadequacies and tiny fears. For example, I think it is perfectly rational to be petrified of bees.

I wasn’t always afraid of bees. In fact, bees and I were the best of friends… Or as much as one can be friends with an insect. But Freud, who isn’t even a psychiatrist, explained that any adult fear can be traced back to some traumatic experience in childhood. Delving into my subconscious, I remember the first time I revealed a friendship between myself and a fuzzy, fat bumblebee to my family. Aged two-and-a-half, I toddled into the lounge, carrying on my out-stretched chubby hand, my rather rotund friend, the bumblebee. I approached Grandma.

“Look Gramma!” I squealed, “I’ve got a fwend!!”

The bumblebee remained calm in my palm. It obviously enjoyed being friends with me, much to my delight. Grandma thought otherwise and proceeded to, as Mum explains, “lightly tap my hand” to get the bumblebee to fly away. I’d like to point out, up until this moment, both the bee and I were muddling along quite well in our strange relationship. But after Grandma ‘lightly’ tapped my hand? Well, the bumblebee was not amused and flew away, after stinging the living bejesus out of my thumb.

The bumblebee and I were no more.

I really want to say it ended there. But I never do things half-arse, so guess what happened? Allergy! My poor thumb became so swollen in fact that I had to be taken to the doctors for an injection, which I have been told many times feels like a tiny bee sting. Yes, what an excellent analogy to make when a person is receiving an injection because of a bee sting. Over the years, I have had several encounters with aggressive bumblebees, honey bees and wasps. And I remain convinced they are after me.

It’s a bold statement to make; that non-sentient critters are more concerned with wiping you off the face of the earth than cross-pollinating Mum’s lavender plants. But without fail, every time I step onto the deck, the bastard bees fly near me, at me and around me. Dignity aside, there is only so much I can do to protect my wellbeing, such as punching the air, squatting and running for cover as I shout, “argh motherfucker!” For the record, Mortein is ineffectual on plump wee buzzy bees.

So there you have it: a perfectly legitimate phobia of bees, linking back to a traumatic childhood experience. Being frightened of a tiny devil creature that can both fly and sting is by no means irrational.

But try as you might, you could never justify Bogyphobia, a fear of bogeyman. At least the bees are real.

Ever seen those little children in stores who aim themselves at anything ceramic, and think “would it be too barbaric to put you on a leash?” Well, not in England. Hello, my name is Rebekah. And I was a Harness Baby.

Alternatively called a child tether or walking reins (because apparently small children are some strange form of equine), the baby harness is worn by toddlers as a safety precaution. Taking child degradation a bit further, the parent or guardian then attaches some form of leash to the back of the harshness, allowing the child to walk freely. Freely my arse. Reading between the lines here, I understand the following: over-active child wears lead, parent holds lead, and child becomes a puppy. Why in God’s name do parents put kids in these devices that were so obviously derived from some form of medieval torture?

Apparently, they were all the rage in England.

Often accused of being emotionally repressed, the Brits have really out-done themselves with this Baby Harness shenanigan. Born in Liverpool in the late eighties, I’m shocked to think other children in the area were kept on leashes. I can see it now: Mrs Bennet taking me to play-group and all the Liscard mothers going down the Cherry Tree Shopping Centre, accompanied by miniature versions of themselves who scrabble ahead, wheezing and panting as their respective leads hold them back. Our chubby little legs raced on but it was always followed by a gasp of shock as we pinged back towards our mummies. Baby Harnesses, for the record, market themselves just over a metre in length.

It wasn’t until we moved to New Zealand that the use of the Baby Harness became more of an issue. We passed through LAX (Americans obviously weren’t fussed at seeing an imprisoned child) but it was avid shoppers in Wellington who weren’t ready to see a small person who was more man’s-best-friend than whole-lotta-baby. Mum only used the harness once in New Zealand. Still at that age where I was saying ‘hello’ quite loudly to every shopper until they replied, passers-by in the Mall looked at me with pity and my mum with disdain.
I’m pretty sure we down-graded to ‘holding Mummy’s hand’ after that incident.

The issue of the Baby Harness wasn’t brought up again until high school, when Mrs Bennet informed a friend of mine I was one of those unfortunate tubby creatures who wore a glorified dog leash as a toddler. Said friend occasionally finds ways to bring it up in conversations (you wonder how, right?) but it was Atticus’ comment the other day, mocking me for being a Harness Baby, that finally set the record straight. For years I thought Mum was ashamed of being seen as a bad parent and simply kept my younger sister off the lead so as to avoid CYF intervention… But the real reason?

“Hate to break it to you kiddo, but you were too fat to fit Rebekah’s Baby Harness.”

“Hannah Montana isn’t making another season? Thank you God!”

Procrastinating turned to panic this morning when I found myself twitching at the table, furiously scribbling lecture notes from March ahead of an afternoon test. It was 6am and after an hour, I abandoned my attempt at studying for children’s television programming. And what a waste of time that was. Where did all my beloved animated series go? Here’s a few select children’s series from the nineties you won’t find on TVNZ:

The Magic School Bus:
Let’s start with Ms Frizzle and her pet Iguana, Liz. The Magic School Bus went everywhere, from the prehistoric ages to inside a scab on that whiney kid Arnold’s knee. Children were immersed in an age where science ruled. Jesus, that horrible sitcom Friends has screened on TV2 endlessly for over a decade. And they axe the School Bus? Not cool, TVNZ, not cool at all.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe:
I almost had the power over the summer when I contemplated buying the DVD box set. Think about it: He-Man and Battle Cat versus Skeletor and Beastman at Castle Grayskull? Why would you ever want to leave your house? Your life will pale in comparison to their awesomeness. Give up… Just give up.

Captain Planet:
Earth, Viiiind, Fire, Water, and ‘Heart’ (honestly, was he really that important?) all combined to bring us a large blue man who, according to Wikipedia, had the ability to control the elements, telepathically speak to his minions, and was “nearly invincible”. That’s right, children. Captain Planet is God. Let’s be proud at least one of our childhood heroes has achieved deity status.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
No really, where the fuck is she? Thanks to DOSBox, I’m now cursing the fact I can’t find her! As a gumshoe at the ACME Detective Agency, her gang of misfit criminals have spent the last half an hour running me all over Hong Kong, Berlin, and some other place I forgot existed. While the television series Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? has most of us hooked, for a lot of kids it was the computer game we yelled at.

Sesame Street:
When I was your age, Cookie Monster actually ate cookies, Oscar the Grouch was still a nasty bastard, and 12 was the highest number we could count to thanks to a pinball machine. What have you got? A vegetarian cookie monster and a muppet who is HIV-positive. Please, don’t tell me how to get to Sesame Street.

Of course, it goes without saying that several shows have been missed. The nineties was a fairly epic decade for children’s television, we can hardly do it justice. But sit yourself down one morning and take a look at the CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the latest wave of the anime invasion, and those squeaky-voiced child actors who must be related to someone famous to have landed that role. Now look closer…

Because Carmen Sandiego is probably in there somewhere.

“Hold still, I can’t hit you while you’re moving.”

There is some satisfaction to be had in fighting with one’s siblings. There is even more in retelling stories of your little victories, with no effort to hide the smirk dripping with schadenfreude. Still, one day the shocking, all-true realisation hits you; you’re adults now. Is maiming your sister for the sake of Complete Remote Control Ownership still acceptable?

Last Friday, a 20-year-old woman faced a New South Wales Supreme Court charged with the manslaughter of her 18-year-old sister. Why, you ask? Well, apparently the two worked themselves into a heated brawl over a pair of hair straighteners. After learning of the attack one night last December, I awoke the following morning to find my 18-year-old sister religiously straightening her blonde hair. In a moment of panic, I quietly inquired as to whether Atticus would kill me over a hair straightener. Silence. Slowly, she turned and said, “Is it a GHD?”
Thanks.

Atticus and I actually get on quite well. Most of the time… I like to think so. Honestly, it’s up for debate. As a younger child, I revelled in the fact I had three inches on the tiny blonde. Now, she has four inches on me. You can see our relationship has improved considerably. But my conquests over her remain numerous. She has lost two front teeth in my presence (one tooth I’ll admit, the second is debateable), and when she broke her foot in the frozen vege section of Woolworths, I wet my pants laughing.

So, it should come as no shock that a little part of my unconscious self is devoted to the impending wrath of Atticus. I wonder how it would end, how she would finally snuff the bitch. Atticus is convinced she is Jedi, maybe I’ll go by Force Choke. But her options are endless. Last week a woman in the United States used the lid of a toilet tank to assault her sister. Her charming mug shot only sought to remind me that anything and everything in my home could be used to end my life in what would look like a tragic accident. I’m a renowned klutz; the notion I misjudged the distance between myself and a sharp, pointy object isn’t too farfetched.

But we’re adults now. Silly displays of aggression between siblings are few and far between. Thankfully, whenever Atticus and I get out of control, there is a mediator on hand. Always the diplomat, Mrs Bennet acts as a liaison between my sister and I during our spectacular displays of sibling rivalry. As she (morbidly) puts it, “One day, I will be dead. And you will have no one except your sister.” While her faith in my social skills never ceases to amaze me, I can’t help but seek to correct her:

“Once upon a time, in a land across the Tasman, there lived two sisters with one hair straightener…”

Mufti Day at a Catholic Primary School is a rare occurrence that allows usually uniformed children to show off their latest threads. At such a young age, their sense of style tends to revolve around what their older siblings no longer fit or worse: what their parents feel is ‘age-appropriate’. It’s not a child’s fault if they look hideous; should all pre-adolescent fashion disasters be forgiven?

Held on the final Friday of each August, Daffodil Day allows Catholic pupils to abandon their miniature business suits and wear whatevs. Most of us had the day etched into our minds long before it rolled around. I had the good fortune as a child to be born towards the end of August, which guaranteed me the opportunity to wear my annual birthday apparel before the novelty wore off.

In 1998, Daffodil Day came at a time when Hanson featured prominently on the airwaves. Awash with adoration for these long-haired, effeminate brothers from Tulsa, I pleaded with Mrs Bennet for an official Hanson t-shirt. My wish was granted and that year, I wore the first band t-shirt I ever owned to Mufti Day.

It was a fucking disaster.

Looking back, I should have known I was in for the long haul when a disgustingly obnoxious boy with the intelligence quota of a grape informed me in the cloak bay that Hanson ate shit. Being nine years old, I was unaware of this shit-eating business Hanson were employed in, so I simply stared at him, no doubt doing a remarkable impression of a guppy. As the day progressed, I discovered Hanson worked in many colourful industries such as mother-fucking, ass-kissing, and ball-sucking.

By the end of the day, my fragile innocent world was crumbling. I knew things about Hanson that no fan should have to endure, and my heroes were no more. Luckily, Hanson fizzled off the mainstream radio and by 1999 were forgotten. The letter I tragically wrote to Taylor Hanson unanswered, I outgrew the t-shirt, and eventually, the Daffodil Day nightmares stopped. I had moved on.

That was until I came across a familiar song on iTunes. As the song began to filter through the speakers those knees buckled from a long forgotten infatuation, my hands flailed, and a shrill squeal escaped my throat, a noise so high-pitched I almost matched the song’s singer.

It was ‘MMMBop’.

Secretly, for the next three to six days, I relived my childhood, pre-Daffodil Day. There are many bands from the nineties that nowadays are socially acceptable to enjoy. Well, almost. We blame our twitterpated response on a sense of nostalgia when a track from a squeaky-voiced heart throb slithers through the stereo. Let’s be honest though; it’s safe to like these shameful bands now.

Still, we’re not brave enough to wear official merchandise.

“Hey look, I wrote 80085 on my calculator!”

My breasts. My ample bosom. My lovely Lady Pillows. Whatever you call them, I am stuck with them. And so is every other female on earth.

Without my assets, life was simple. Everyday tasks such as wearing a seatbelt, running, and holding a conversation with a male sales assistant were less than exhausting. The Boob Punch was also an ineffective form of torture. Every so often, I make the mistake of violently wrenching open the door to my shower box, thwacking myself square in the left bosom. I grabble at myself and whimper like a kicked puppy, reciting a colourful list of obscenities that would make any drunken sailor proud. But amidst my pain it always comes back to the fact that life was safer without my fun-bags.

I don’t proclaim to be well-endowed or possess a chest that can make grown men cry, but when my singlet falls particularly low, I get scolded for looking like a harlot. Apparently my jiggly bits aren’t appreciated at the cafe table. So I frown and adjust myself, knowing that they’re sizeable enough to make life more difficult. Not that I want to have them removed to aid my plight for a carefree existence, but I can understand the long-told story of Amazonian women slicing off their right gazonga to make breast use of their bow and arrows.

It’s not something I sit around and actively ponder, what life would be like without Bonnie and Clyde. But as the temperature begins to soar and the sun glares down on Wellington, scolding the city like a spoilt child, I envy those agonisingly attractive men who use any excuse near a beach to remove their shirt in an effort to cool off. Bitch please, I used to be able to do that.

With Wellington City Council relaxing their laws about public nudity on beaches, I probably still could. Just think about that—removing your clothes and basking in all your natural glory on Oriental Parade. Are you uncomfortable yet? Now, aged 20, I cringe and curl up in a ball at the thought of having to remove my top in public. But it wasn’t always so, and 14 years ago, I lacked certain endowments that allowed me to run wild and rampant along Days Bay.

I’ve told it only gets worse from here on in, and I shouldn’t take my melons for granted. One day, as Mrs Bennet warns me, my Egg McMuffins are going to form an exploration party and head south. Already petrified, television campaigns advise me of free mammogram services for women over 45 years of age. Now I know why gravity will ruin my life; my Tata Twins will need to dangle as if independent from my body before I make the insane decision to place them in a glorified sandwich press.

Christ. I think I’m going to stick to self-searching in my shower after the weekly Boob Punch for now.