The Contingency Plan

red book of memories

to make work a little more enjoyable jeremy and i have been emailing each other various top five lists. we've gone through top five favourite songs, top five occupations, top five meals when you're broke and have a week before pay day, etc.

anyhow, he suggested top five childhood memories today and thinking about it was so enjoyable that i've decided to share my list.

so here they are, my top five childhood memories:

1. raising my sister. shortly after the birth of my sister, natasha, my parents purchased a chicken shop in possible one of the worst suburbs in sydney to pay off their mortgage. we moved into the apartment above the shop and my aunt came from overseas to help us out. nevertheless, business was booming and tash was very young so i spent all of my spare time taking care of her. i was six at the time and did everything from changing her nappies to feeding her and bathing her - the lot. the whole family was in the lounge room when she took her first steps and she came straight to me and would only walk to me for the first little while. we're still very very close.

2. i was a rather cheeky child. when i was around three, my brother was a year old and i was rather jealous of him so my mission in life was to devise plans on how to convince my parents to get rid of him. i clearly remember doing this. my favourite argument was that dad should take him to work and leave him at the construction site and that the workers there (as dad was a shift worker at the time) would take care of him. i still think it's genius.

3. as i've mentioned, my mother's rather eccentric. when i was in grade four, she decided she was tired of her shrinking breasts (bad side affect of breast feeding) and would jump the trend and get a boob job. i was going through a phase where i just wanted a normal mother not a crazy mother so she decided not to tell me, and said she was having a stomach operation instead. on the morning of the operation i went to school a little teary so the teachers decided that in chapel that morning the whole school would pray that mum's operation would be successful. the principle/pastor even got in on the act... dear lord, the look on their conservative christian faces when her 'stomach operation' resulted in big hooters...

4. the beach. because we lived out west, we'd make a whole day of going to the beach. we'd leave at 8am, spend every moment of the day in the sun, eat ice cream and fish and chips (mega treat!), leave just before sun set and fall asleep on the way home with warm skin and sand in our hair. as dad's scottish, he'd get really burnt so we'd spend the next week having back peeling competitions.

5. music. i know it's a general memory and probably more of an influence, but oh well. my parents both have rich, fabulous voices. everyone in my family can sing, and as brady bunch as it sounds (and before we turned into the debauched bunch that we are), we use to all sing a lot together in full harmony. i used to think this was normal. they also sent me to a small christian school that had a strong focus on philosophy and the creative arts, so music, dancing, singing and classic texts were just as important as mathematics.

6. adding another just cause i can... jumping on dad's stomach. being into martial arts dad had (and still does) a stomach of steel and use to let me jump on it until i was around three. so much fun!

ahh the memories...

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