Ever look back on your upbringing and think, “Shit, I was dumb.”
- I thought Red Bull was alcohol.
Not just that it contained alcohol, it was alcohol. Pure alcohol. My Dad told me this to stop me from buying it. It was the only item in our corner shop that we weren’t, under any circumstances, allowed to purchase. I believed this for a number of reasons – The packaging wasn’t very appealing to me as a child, only the bold boys in my neighbourhood seemed to drink it, and my dad was very convincing. Although it dawned on me later in life that this was simply un-true, I still don’t drink Red Bull around my Dad.
- I thought my parents were always right.
They weren’t. They were young and I was their second child. I think they had barely gotten to grips with having one sprog before I came along. It took me years to realise that it was OK for me to disagree with them, because that’s what makes you an individual. I can see infinite differences between how my little sisters have been raised and how I was. For Sonny (the youngest) it was: “Go sit on the naughty stair!” For me it was; “You’re gonna have a sore arse when you get home.” I love my parents with all my heart, but God, they really were shit sometimes.
- I believed that if you continuously picked your nose it would grow bigger.
Another Papa Dobbin classic here. He doesn’t have a big nose per-sé, but it is generously proportioned to be larger than the average hooter. I picked my nose a lot when I was younger, and every time he caught me doing it he would point to his own and say “This is what you’ll get!” in a cheerful voice.
- I was convinced that if I made a face and the wind changed, it would stay like that.
Despite having no idea what this means now, when I was a child I thought it was true. I literally thought a gust of wind would come and keep my face stuck on ugly mode. That I’d be walking around with squinty eyes and my tongue stuck out for the rest of my life.
- I thought The Simpsons was a regular cartoon.
Honestly, I find The Simpsons FAR funnier now that I’m older, because I actually understand the jokes. When I was a child I watched it because it was a cartoon on at 6PM. The last cartoon of the day before all hell broke loose and the News came on. In a recent episode I watched on the constant repeats offered by Sky, Homer says; “If you pray to the wrong god, you might just make the right one madder and madder” Would I have got this as a child? Hell no! Satire is not for the mind of a child. I regularly watch old episodes and have my mind blown by how niave I was.
- I thought the News was the worst thing ever.
Remember how pissed off you were when your parents turned on the News? Not that there was anything else on the other channels, but you would watch literally anything but the News. I even remember trying to be interested in it when I was in my early teens, but even then I just didn’t get it. I was so oblivious to current events, that I thought Sinn Fein was a person till I was about 14. I’m pretty well informed now, but there’s still no way I could sit and watch BBC News 24 like some older people do.
- I thought Santa was real.
Yeah, until I was around ten. My cousin told me it was just my Mum and Dad. I pretended I knew but I didn’t. I was heartbroken. I still think back to all those letters I had sent to the North Pole and the steps my parents took to convince me. My Dad threw rocks on the roof. My Mum wrote a letter in tiny hand-writing pretending it was from the elves. I also think back to the times it was glaringly obvious; once my Dad told me Santa prefers a nice cold beer instead of milk. Once I woke up from a nightmare and went downstairs, Mum freaked out when she saw me and started shouting “BACK TO BED! SANTA HASN’T HAD TIME YET!” I always wondered why they were so tired in the mornings and didn’t want to experience the Christmas joy.
- I thought I’d be a pioneer.
One night on the way home from my Granny Dobbin’s house, my Dad and I stopped for chicken burgers. While we were waiting, my Dad noticed something in the doorway of an old building. I’ve never seen my Dad scared, apart from this night. He turned on the van and drove forward a bit. As an intuitive child (aka nosey as fuck) I realized something was wrong. He said he had to phone the ambulance, because he had seen a body in the doorway (sometimes my Dad could be blunt). He got out of the van to make the call but all I had to do was put down the window to hear him talking. He said he didn’t want to approach the body because his daughter was with him, but he was pretty sure that he/she wasn’t breathing. While we were waiting, to distract me (maybe more himself) we went to collect our burgers. I was eating mine when the ambulance arrived, which on reflection is strange, because I should have been too worried about the dead body to eat. The paramedics approached the body and knelt down. The body groaned, rolled over and said; “Pete?”
It was just a man who had drunk too much, sat down and fallen asleep. My Dad let me get out of the van and I remember standing there in awe that alcohol could do this to a person. I stood there, chicken burger in one hand and said “I’ll never drink alcohol, Dad.” This was actually a load of crap because 9 years later he was picking me up from the Square Peg and cleaning my drunk-sick from the back of the car.
Although I look back at these times with a twinge of embarrassment, I’m positive I had a very normal, joyful childhood. If I have kids and they turn out to be as happy as I was growing up, I think I’ll have done a pretty remarkable job. My parents don’t read this, but they should be proud of themselves.
mollysbook 