My recent story about desperately seeking out candy to eat as a young child somehow pushed down through the trama mists of the mind swamp and found a garbage covered island in the fog.
On that island was this memory.
I was 7. We had fled Canada and my Grandfather had set my mother my sister and I up in a nice place in a flash Suburb of Auckland called Bucklands Beach. I was 7 and it was the early 80s.
The parents were divorced and out of control. Living their best boozy 80s single parent lives, and so it was time for me to embrace my CODP ( Child of divorced Parents ) essence and start really acting up.
The first naughty thing I did was start stealing White Chocolate Skulls filled with some kind of yummy weird red goo. There was a store down the road from our house and I would go in there and chat to the store owner until he had to talk to a customer, when he was dealing with that, I would grab one Skull Crusher and pocket it.
I would say goodbye and then flee back home.
Back home I had a secret hidey hole.
It was a small cupboard in the wall of the lounge. I could almost sit up in it.
It was for some reason carpeted in thick shag pile 80s green carpet. I had brought in a number of pumpkins, some scary toys ( rubber spiders and snakes) and a red candle.
I would light the candle and sit in there embracing the Goth essence of the pumpkins, red candle and spiders. I was Goth to the bones… and was later in life to be deeply mashed into this subculture.
I would then draw the stolen skull candy out of my pocket and nibble away at it till it was gone. Sucking down the yummy red bloody center.
The combination of the oxygen deprivation from the lit candle in the sealed space and the toxic chemicals in the colorings and flavorings of the bright red candy blood goo in the skull would send me to the fucking moon. Pupils like dinner plates man.
I would wait till I was, for lack of a better term, Off my Fucking Face Fucked Up, and blow the candle out and stagger outside to Vibe man Vibe.
I now work in Natural Health, and I know exactly what was happening. I definitely had an extreme Red Dye Allergy. My hippy mother ensured I had a very healthy diet, devoid of sugar and toxins. This gunge hit me like a brick.
Symptoms Of Red Dye Allergy
Faster pulse
Significant drop in blood pressure
Dizziness
Fainting
Lack of sleep
Poor concentration
Hyperactivity
Hypersensitivity
Hyperfocus.
So to me it was Drugs for sure.
I was hooked and stole one Skull a day for many days.
One day my father suddenly turned up after a year of being absent… the last time I saw him was when I passed the Christmas Divorce Test. In Hawaii.
He had a cool low slung truck and was in full party mode. For some reason he came and picked myself and my sister up and drove us out to a farm where a bunch of his mates lived. He went inside to the kitchen to pound beers and blaze weed with his pals… my sister and I were left to roam free.
We roamed about the farm for a bit and then we started hanging out inside.
It was inside sneaking into the rooms of the house that I saw it.
A jar by the bed full of money.
Many of us have the experience of stealing coins out of change jars I’m sure.
This jar was piled high with silver. My blooming criminal addict brain immediately presented me the task of getting that money, so I could by a shit ton of skull candies and fuck myself up good in my secret Goth Base.
I looked around for something to carry the money in, and spied a folded up handkerchief.
Nabbing this, I loaded a good whack of the 50 Cent and 20 Cent coins into it and twisting it about snuck out of the house.
My sister saw me and said “What that?”
Me: “Its some money. I’m going to buy a present for mum with it.”
Her: “Dont tell Dad!”
Suddenly I heard a yell. The froze us to the core.
“DONT TELL DAD WHAT"!!”
It was our Dad and he had come out to take us home and I was snapped.
He saw the rolled up stolen money, and I think he was crushed by his sudden realization that I had become a “Bad Kid”. The type forged in the fires of inattentive divorced 80s parents.
He snuck the money back inside into the Jar…
And we rolled out.
I remember him ranting on about stealing being bad but I was just so mentally smashed from being caught at that point, and super sad for my little sister who was crying her eyes out in the back.
My Dad had the scary burnt leaves and beer smell fuming off him and was red eyed and ranting. Everything was spiraling down into a black abyss.
He stopped the truck at the gate at the end of the farm.
It was alway my job to open the gates. Opening fucking gates were the bane of my life.
I opened the heavy metal door of the truck and ….
POW.!!! Suddenly got such a shock I was blasted into near unconsciousness.
What the FUCK? I struggled back to life, head buzzing, heart pounding. Later I found I had even pissed myself a bit.
“THAT’S GOD PUNISHING YOU FOR STEALING!” Yelled my Dad.
Those words went into my brain like a Javelin.
I snapped and went totally numb.
On opening the truck door I had touched the metal door, with its bare metal handle to a high powered electric fence.
I sat there fucked. God was punishing me. My sisters crying, Dads crazy.
Mums crazy and sad. Everything is shit.
The world was pretty black.
We were taken home and My father made me tell my mother what I had done.
I was numb, I didn’t care. He blamed her for being as shit mother and that’s why we were spoiled shit kids. He took off and wasn’t seen again for ages.
I went to my room and drew pictures of ET flying away with me in a cardboard box, because I didn’t have a bike he could magic up in the air.
I stopped stealing, dismantled my Goth Base, and started doing much more wandering about in a confused daze of suppressed grief being very careful not to touch things.
I did however eventually come right. Come out of apathy get mad at the world and start stealing and acting up again.
Thanks for reading.
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Dont be cheap.
O m g you can’t make this stuff up. I’m shell shocked reading it and just wanna hug little you 🤗
Haven't seen much of your stuff lately I think the algo is suppressing it, at least to me.