EXCUSES, EXCUSES AND YOU KIDS ARE LITTLE FUCKOS

I could dribble out some of those stock standard excuses as to why it has been ages since I dropped words into the blog sphere. You know the ones...I was abducted by aliens and probed so deeply my brain was compacted into the top of my skull, or the one that goes...I sneezed so hard part of my brain dislodged and flew out of my nose taking the head off a passing cat, or who could forget the old...listen fucko I'll update this blog whenever I fucken well feel like and if you've got an issue with that then perhaps you should pay me for my time and then maybe, just maybe I would be a bit more committed to saying things on a more regular basis. Perhaps if I wasn't so busy, pretending to be busy then I would have done something about it.

Anyway today I thought I would write something about being a kid and the horrid things you do to one another as a child. I grew up with two younger brothers and I am quite surprised my parents had the patience and dedication not to smother us in our sleeps and get rid of us years ago. Shocking? Yes of course it is, but when I think back to the things my brothers and I got up to I am inspired to thank the Gods for making me 'mosexual so that the only children I have to worry over are the puppy and kitty kind. Seriously how the hell do parents do it? I've heard all the stories about the bond a mother develops for her child and all that but I'm lost as to how that works. Understandably the only thing I've given birth to comes from a session of serious face stuffing and it ends up sitting at the bottom of a bowl of water and let me tell you even that old saying 'it's got a face only a mother could love' certainly doesn't apply to that.

Anyway enough about my attempts to adopt my own arse art, lets relive the memories shall we. I remember little things like licking my food to prevent having to share it with either of my brothers, this of course progressed into spitting on each others food in order to steal it off them, oh yeah the extent of our creativity knew no bounds. Then there were the times my middle brother and I would torment our younger brother. As we fought he would become more distressed which meant he would freak out and try and make us stop, which usually worked, however it also meant we would then become a dedicated team set on attacking him for stopping us from fighting. As both our parents worked in the family business it meant that we would spend large amounts of time by ourselves. It also meant that our elderly neighbour had my parents on direct dial so she could call them whenever she heard lots of screaming or crying.

This then meant my mother would climb into the car, drive home at break neck speed, using the traffic jams and the embarrassment of having a neighbour say things like 'your children are at each others throats again' to build on her anger so that by the time the wheels of the family car screamed into the driveway she would be so angry that her voice could be heard by dogs 5 neighbourghoods away. As we scattered she would be scoping the scene for implements of punishment, picking up the nearest branch, wooden spoon, fly swat or as a last resort her own hand to beat the living crap out of our arses. Naturally we developed a skill of fighting quietly so the neighbours wouldn't hear us. I vividly remember cornering my littlest brother out the front of our house cos he had climbed a tree, tears streaming down his face, cos we were fighting and my middle brother and I telling him to come inside so the neighbours wouldn't spring us and make the call.

If my middle brother were still a child now he would be classified hyperactive and pumped full of drugs to calm him down but back in the 70's we just knew not to give him red cordial or sweets of any kind. This was of course completely un-avoidable at Easter, which meant my middle brother would devour all his sweet treats in record time and then use the rest of the day to climb the walls like a cat trapped in a box of water. His anger was the sort that entire hospital wings could be devoted to studying. I remember one time when it was possible he may have to wear glasses and my torments of four eyes and other witty asides made him so angry that my Dad had to hold him back as he lurched at me. Hearing my father yell 'RUN!' with a bit of terror and panic in his voice was enough for me to run so fast I could have been an Olympic contender. Just writing this makes me realise something, perhaps the reason my parents didn't smother us was because each day they knew our lives were on the edge anyway because we were more than likely to kill each other without there help. Also with most of our street wishing our parents would eradicate us I'm sure if one or all of us had died they would come out to greet the TV crews with comments that included words like 'devils spawn' and 'pre-pubescent terrorists'.

Thankfully we are much more adult and loving to one another now. Full credit to my beautiful parents for putting up with all our shit and for beating some sense into us. How they coped I will never know but I love them endlessly for everything they did on our behalf.