by Darren Horton

Created on: November 25, 2010   Last Updated: May 27, 2011

I was born, without fuss - nearly taking my mother and the doctors by surprise. 

As a reward for my selflessness I was subjected to the ritual abuse.  I was slapped, prodded, slapped, immersed in water and slapped again.  I cried after the third slap so I was ok, but was slapped again anyway, just to make sure. 

Then I was washed, wrapped in a blanket, and handed over to my mother who cradled me lovingly in her arms like only a mother can.  I was her second child, born just after midnight, January 2nd 1979.

In the morning my family came to visit.  My father kissed my mother and sat in a chair by the bed.  My older brother kissed (his) mother, pretending not to notice me, and then went to sit on (his) father’s knee.

After eating all the grapes the two dominant males leant over me for a closer inspection.  I wasn't doing anything particularly exciting or interesting so my brother prodded me.  I wriggled indifferently.  My father prodded me as well and said,

"Isn't he ugly?”

My mother didn’t argue the point but she was pretty miffed.  I bet she wished she hadn’t bothered.  My father, not realising he had said the wrong thing, left, highly satisfied that his wife was happy and that their new-born baby son was ugly-ok.

I was an ugly baby.  There are photographs to prove it.  I was a chunky, pink-faced, blotchy-skinned, fatheaded miniature Buddha – only uglier.  My Dad said I had a face like an orang-utan's arse. 

And I grew fat.  So fat and ugly in fact, that, unlike other mothers, mine had no fear of baby-snatchers.  She was quite happy leaving me outside the shops in my pram, tethered to a lamppost, like a dog.

I was a dead weight.  Alive of course, but not so much as anybody noticed.  I slept for hours on end, waking occasionally to be fed.  Then I'd fall once again into a deep, deep slumber.  This worried my parents at first.  They thought it was abnormal how much I slept; how much I ate; how little I cried; and how lifeless I was in comparison with their first-born.  The mid-wife reassured them everything was fine and showed my mother how to prod and slap me.  But it was to take more than that to get some life out of me.

I was four when I spoke my first coherent words. 

My mother, for the fifth or sixth time that day, was lacing up my shoes ready to go out again.  Every day we’d visit friends

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>