Terror toy

When I was a kid, I used to have a furby. That furby lived on the funny little shelf-headboard thing behind me bed, which wasn’t bolted to anything so it would shake around whenever I jostled my bed.

Anyway, one night I turned in my sleep and maybe it was some violent sleep-turning because next thing I know I’m being woken up by a very loud furby, right in my ear.

Let me tell you right now that you have not experienced true terror until you’ve woken up in the middle of the night to a furby yawning in your ear and saying in a piercing voice “cockadoodledoo!”

As if furbies weren’t scary enough as it is.

Fire and stuffed toys

I can remember the first time our parents did a fire alarm drill on us as kids. My brothers and I failed dismally.

I remember it well. Matthew, Robert and I were standing on our pillows on the floor, pretending to surf. The alarm went off, and the three of us picked up our pillows/surfboards and held them underneath our arms as we swaggered, yes, swaggered into the office where the sound was coming from.

Mum and my stepdad were sitting there with the alarm, looking disappointed that we hadn’t even attempted the get low, get out method that we hear on TV so often.

They made us practice it a few times after that, but Robert and I both got in trouble for trying to save our teddy bears in the escape. I remember wondering how I could ever possibly leave my teddy Tiberius behind in the event of a fire.

It’s funny what’s important to kids.

Losing it

When I was little I got lost up Mount Maunganui.

Our family had gone, with our grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. We’d walked up to the top, and stopped for a rest. While we were up there, my cousin David and I did some exploring around the summit. When we returned, everyone had disappeared.

David and I shot down the mountain again, thinking that we’d catch up with the others on the path. We didn’t. In fact, to this day, I’m really not sure how we didn’t catch up to them.

So David and I reached the bottom of the Mount and sat down, thinking that our family must have gone the other way down, and would come out the bottom any moment. We waited and waited, and eventually David suggested we go back up to look for them.

Now, I’m a lazy, unfit person. I have been that way for a long time. I was probably around seven at the time, and I was lazy even then. So I most certainly did not want to walk back up the mountain in the middle of a hot summer’s day. We played paper scissors rock to see if we should stay put, or go back up. I won, and being the cocky little kid I was, I said to David “I still would have stayed here even if you won.”

David was a fair bit older than me, and looking back, what he did at that point was inexcusable, considering that he should have known better. The moment I said that I would have stayed anyway, he ran back off up the mountain, abandoning me at the bottom.

What seemed like an hour passed while I waited for him to come back. I thought that surely he’d have made it to the top and would be coming back out the bottom any minute now. But he didn’t, and eventually I decided to head back up and look for everyone.

By this point I was becoming reasonably distressed, and by the time I was halfway up the mountain and hadn’t seen any of my family members, I was in hysterics. I have a vivid memory of walking along under the hot sun, thirsty, exhausted, and frightened, with tears streaming down my face. Every now and then I’d scream out “MUM!” in desperation. The worst thing was that I was walking at a distance behind another family, and they never even turned back to ask if I, a solitary little girl, was alright.

In fact, even though I passed a number of people, nobody asked if I was okay until I was on my way back down again. A woman took me under her wing, gave me a drink of water, and walked me back down to the bottom towards Pilot Bay. With perfect timing, Mum appeared, and she was furious with me. I hadn’t known, but apparently another young girl had been murdered up there not long ago.

The saddest part of all was that the family had their picnic without me.

The game of kings

There’s this little game we used to play in primary school that was perhaps the most epic game of all time: Bullrush.

Bullrush involves having one or two people in the middle of the school field, and the rest of the class running from one end to the other and trying not to get tackled. If they get tackled, they join the kids in the middle and start trying to tackle the rest of the kids when they run back. The game ends when there’s only one person left that hasn’t yet been tackled.

I just read a news story this morning saying that a Christchurch principal is bringing Bullrush back to his school, since it was banned in the 1990’s. This is news to me, considering that I was playing it at my primary school in the early 2000’s.

Still, good on this guy. He believes NZ children are overprotected now when it comes to rough and tumble games like this. I’m inclined to agree with him. Sure, I sprained my wrist once playing it, and once I got dragged on my stomach halfway across the field after I tried to tackle a boy but just ended up latched onto his arm while he continued to run, but it never did any permanent damage, and it was ridiculously fun.

Those children at that primary school are lucky buggers.

The devil’s child

My mum has this little toe ring that lives on her second biggest toe, otherwise known as the little piggy that stayed home. She doesn’t take it off.

When I was younger, we were sitting on the couch watching TV, and she had her feet up on my lap. Feeling somewhat adventurous, I decided to see if I could get the ring off her toe. I succeeded.

You should have seen the look of mingled horror and fury on her face.

For a while after that, Mum nicknamed me ‘spawn of Satan’, and would sometimes come and stand in my bedroom door making the sign of the cross at me.

The stupidity wars

Shenanigans.

What a fantastic word. Not only does it feel beautiful to say, it’s also the perfect word to describe . . . well, shenanigans. When I was young, my brothers and I got up to a whole lot of shenanigans. For example:

We once tied the youngest brother to a computer chair with a skipping rope. He was probably younger than five, I can’t remember. We spun him round in the chair until it fell over, with him still tied into it. We got in trouble.

We used to sit on our skateboards and roll down our driveway because it was both long and steep. My stepbrother and I had the bright idea one day to tie our skateboards together with the aforementioned skipping rope (it brings nothing but pain) and roll down the driveway like that. My brother went first, and when the rope pulled taut, I started to roll. When it pulled taut again, as he wasn’t moving, my skateboard stopped moving, but I kept going, right across the concrete. I had huge scrapes covering the backs of my thighs and going halfway up my butt. Yes, I was skateboarding in a skirt. I was young, give me a break.

For some reason we thought it would be fun once to swing a sleeping bag around by the string of it’s little case/bag thing. It hit my brother in the face and he ran upstairs crying. When we followed him up we were bewildered to find him lying on the bed with blood streaming down his face while Mum and my Stepdad applied dettol. I still don’t really understand how that happened from a sleeping bag.

While outside on the back lawn playfighting with my brother, I got caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between him and my neighbour, Rose. Rose, being small and twig-like, inevitably lost, and my brother, not expecting it, accidentally pulled me too hard, and I fell down a bank, landing footfirst onto a piece of wood with a nail sticking out of it that my uncle had left there when he was doing manly building things. The worst thing to hear, while I lay on the ground screaming, was Rose say “OH MY GOSH LOOK AT HER FOOT.”

Gotta love those days of good ol’ rough and tumble.

Midnight Barbie hunts

While we’re on the subject of creepy, sleep-related childhood memories, let me reminisce about my big brother, Matthew.

One night when I was young, I woke in the middle of the night to hear somebody quietly talking in the lounge. After listening a little longer, I realised it was Matt, happily chatting away to himself. I’d hear the occasional clink or thunk, as if he were picking things up and putting them down. I listened to this for awhile until I heard him say, quite clearly, “Baaaarbiiiiieeee.”

I then heard him make his way down the hallway and stop in the doorway to my bedroom. He didn’t come any further, just stood there. I could tell he was there because I could hear him breathing. I’m not sure how long he was there for, I was a little freaked out and was a bit afraid to move. Eventually he wandered off again, in pursuit of this “Barbie” I’m assuming.

He didn’t remember it in the morning.

Awake from your slumber

When I was a child I used to scare the living daylights out of my mother whenever I had a nightmare, because I’d wake up and go into her room, but I’d be too scared to actually wake her up.

I’d stand there beside her bed wringing my hands and silently freaking out until she somehow sensed there was someone watching her, and she’d open her eyes, see me  inches away from her sleeping form  and have a miniature heart attack.

I don’t know why I wouldn’t wake her up. I think I felt bad about doing it, but I was torn between wanting to let her sleep, but also wanting her to wake up and comfort me. So I’d just stand there quietly while my emotions raged like a wild storm within me. 

I always felt better after Mum woke up though. She’d give me one of her stuffed toys, a little yellow dog she named Padrick (which I always thought was a funny name), and even though I knew it, she’d reassure me that everything was fine and I was safe. Then I could go back to sleep in peace.

But can we just stop for a second and imagine what it would be like to wake up in the middle of the night to find the silhouette of a child looming over you? Like honestly how creepy would that be to realise somebody had been standing there for goodness only knows how long while visions of sugarplums danced in your head or something along those lines. 

My poor mother.

Fond memories of the terror-bunny

We used to have a pet named Muffin, who Mum affectionately described the other day as “A dog in a rabbit’s body”.

Muffin was a terrifying bunny. You expect them to be timid, maybe a little cuddly, and generally harmless. But then, she never did play by the rules.

We used to bring the rabbits inside sometimes to hop around the house so we could play with them. I remember on one such time, going up to Muffin and reaching out my hand to pat her lovely, floppy ears, and then quickly snatching it back when she bared her teeth at me.

Many an afternoon would I spend sitting on top of Muffin’s hutch, crying in fear and working up the courage to lower her food bowl in. You could be certain that she’d run at said hand with an odd grunting noise and maybe bite it if you weren’t quite quick enough pulling it back out.

At our old house, we had a large, fully-fenced backyard, so were able to let all three of our bunnies out to run around during the daytime. It would be a job for the entire family to round them up and put them back in their hutches at night though. We didn’t mind, and our rabbits had a lot more freedom than any other pet rabbits would. The only downside was that Muffin was loose in the backyard.

We were usually safe from her attacking out there. Sometimes she’d even let us pat her. Our cats, however, could not set one foot in the yard without Muffin detecting them with some sort of sixth sense and shooting across the lawn towards them like a torpedo. I don’t think I ever saw her catch one of the cats, but phwoar, did she terrorize them.

It’s really funny, thinking back, to imagine a rabbit chasing a cat. If anything it should be the other way around. I only wish Muffin had lived long enough to meet our dogs.

I would have loved to see that go down.