I remember being three. And one other memory even before that. Being three was riding on the bus. Being four was a Wellington tram with my mum, going to see a doctor who put things on my head that made a squiggly line. Look, he said, a squiggly line. That's your brain.

I remember being five because I was a big boy now I'm.

I remember being six because that was when my teacher would thrash me with a steel ruler every time I entertained a disobedient petite mal seizure. Then I remember being seven because that was when the headmaster smacked me on the hand with a leather strap, full force, six times, for being a kid.

I remember being eight because my mum wouldn't buy me a rope for my birthday. She thought it was a stupid present and got me something plastic that took batteries instead, which meant I couldn't be a cowboy. I remember being nine because I gave up having birthdays. But I did go flying a Christmas kite with poppa 'til it crashed and broke and poppa laughed. Poppa laughing made me feel better.

Being ten was Double Figures.

I don't remember being eleven. It might have been when I fell in love with Sallyanne Nielson. We had kissing contests in the basement and we showed each other our cocks until someone said that's where babies come from and we all just stopped being children then.

I remember my childhood being green and new and completely free. I roamed an endless plain of exciting things where I could explore around all the corners and flowed effortlessly on a gentle wind of easy relationships. I had a best friend and a second for spare and we got together and made up games and shouted at each other across the street and went off on adventures. I built crazy ramshackle tree houses and went fishing with a bent pin.

The endless plain of my childhood had no walls. But occasionally there were doors and from out of those doors, from time to time, would burst a furious adult. These adults were big and had scary eyes. They'd hit you and yell at you for being stupid, for being happy. And they'd say my room, behind that door, that's where you have to be. You'd say yes, or no, or whatever it took to make them go away, and they'd hang a sign on the door and close it behind them. The sign said 'happiness'.

I remember being twelve because next birthday you'll be a teenager and I remember being thirteen because I was a teenager and nothing happened.

I remember being fourteen because the plain of my life had become a forest of doors labeled happiness and one by one my friends would enter them. Happiness was a girlfriend, a job, a course of study. Happiness was a door you opened to enter, and then closed to protect you from any alternative.

Learn more about this author, Ross Munro.
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