Chapter 33 - Iri exposed...

I thought I would share a little bit about myself… you know, a bit of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” type of thing. So here are a few random things about me… a peek into my childhood… Enter at your own risk…



• My parents tell me that before I could walk, I would crawl everywhere and get into everything. They said that I would go into the kitchen and use the drawers as a ladder… I would pull out a drawer and crawl up it, then from there I would pull out another drawer and crawl up further… all to get to the biscuit jar! Haha. Even back then, I was a determined little girl who loved her nammi and would stop at nothing to get what she wanted!

• I was a huge NKOTB fan growing up (for those who were not groupies… that was New Kids On The Block. I went to the concert along with thousands of other screaming young girls… I had all their albums and videos… I would sing into my hair brush and dance in front of the mirror pretending to be Donnie - the lead singer of course… and I had all their posters hanging up in my room…).

• I used to buy all the TV / music magazines and cut out the posters of my “crushes” at the time (that was of course NKOTB, Jason Priestly, Luke Perry and Johnny Depp) and hang them all over my bedroom walls. However, I was never good at using scissors and cutting things straight. So I would start cutting out a picture and it would progressively get smaller and smaller until eventually there would be nothing left of the picture and I would end up having to throw it away!

• When my mum would pick me up from kindy every afternoon, she would always find me playing with the boys, hammering pieces of wood together, and playing with cars and blocks… whilst all the other girls were playing nicely together with dolls (Mmmmm… warning bells… my parents should have known then…)

• I never wore dresses and would throw a tantrum if my mum made me wear them (more warning signs!)

• When I was about 8 years old, I wanted to be a boy and did not answer to my own name… I demanded everyone call me Michael (oh dear… classic case!)

• I remember one time at school when I was about 6 years old… I was desperate to go to the toilet but the teacher was really mad for some reason and I was too scared to ask if I could go to the toilet. Instead I pee’d in my seat and then nonchalantly walked behind my seat and tipped it onto the carpet. I then proceeded to wring my skirt dry. A little boy asked me if I had pee’d myself as my skirt was all wet and crumpled and the floor was wet – I of course got very angry at him and denied the whole thing!

• I remember when I got my first proper bike… it was a red race bike. I had begged mum and dad to buy it for such a long time! I was very proud of it and took really good care of it. I remember one day when I was at a friend’s house and it started to rain. I didn’t want my bike to get wet so I raced home as fast as I could. I was riding so fast, and because of the rain, my brakes didn’t work well, so when I rode up the driveway, I couldn’t stop and I crashed straight into our brick letter box and really hurt myself, my ego and my precious bike! R.I.P. little red racer.

• I did my Communion when I was about 9 years old, and after that I became quite religious for a little while. I would say the Rosary every night and make my sister say it too. I had no clue what it all meant and I just raced through the whole thing and said it as fast as I could to get it over and done with. One day, my dad told me that maybe it was better to just say a little prayer to God that really meant something, so after that, I started having chats with the big fella. I told him how sorry I was for all the bad things people did in the world and how disappointed he must be in all of us. (Heavy stuff for a 9 year old!) And during my little chats with God, I would also ask him for things I wanted, making a deal with him that if he gave me those things, then I would be “really good” in return.

• Growing up, I always wanted to be a tennis player.

• When I was really young, I remember sitting in the back seat of the car and seeing road signs with arrows pointing upward (as if to say that a particular town was up ahead). I used to think that the sign meant that the town was actually right above us and I remember looking up to the sky and thinking how far away it must be as I could still only see blue sky.

• When I was about 9 years old, I came home from school with a lovely picture I had drawn of a kookaburra (Australian bird). My mum laughed so hard at my drawing and she still falls off her chair with laughter when I mention it… needless to say, it wasn’t a Picasso! It looked nothing like a bird actually – in fact it looked more like an animal that was yet to be discovered! (These days, I still find it a challenge just to draw stick figures!)



• I was always really good at saving money when I was a kid. The money that I got for my birthday, Christmas’ and from working I would give to my dad to put away (and my dad paid us 10% interest each month on whatever money we saved). I was never going to waste my money on girly things like my sisters did – you know… clothes and makeup and things! (I ended up saving $10,000 by the time I was 18 years old).

• When I was 6 years old, I remember being at school and a cockroach crawled up my leg. (That was the beginning of my cockroach phobia…)

• When I was about 7 years old, I went to the toilet at school and did a number 2. There was a group girls, aged about 12 years old, standing outside the toilet cubicles at the basin. I heard them saying that it really stunk in the toilet. I got really nervous that they would know it was me… so I did what any normal 6 year old would do… I crawled under the divider into the next toilet cubicle and walked out of that toilet, proudly stating that I wasn’t the stinker as I came out of that other toilet. The girls said that they didn’t believe me as they had peered under the door and saw I was the only one in the toilets. (Needless to say, that was the beginning of my toilet phobia…)