Childhood

Michael Jackson has a beautiful song with these lyrics:

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Last weekend I reunited with my old friend Rodney Quong who I grew up with in Darwin.  We last saw each other in (I believe) 1976 so it clearly is a long time !  As fate has it a random photo online led me to ask who was in the background with me, that person was Rodney  -- who now lives in the same city as I do.

He hasn't changed, yes we all age and we look a little taller, fatter etc than in our youth. But underneath that we are the same people.  It was an incredible experience and exhausting at the same time, to be using a part of your brain that you haven't exercised to recall stories etc

We had alot of catching up and we connected instantly. The depth of our background relationship runs deep and this allowed us to move quickly into the present.

As children we played 'war'; which was politically correct to do then. Cowboys and Indians was less popular and lacked the same heroic overtones that war  - of the second world war variety embraced. Rodney and I with our families went to countless parties and sleepovers were a very common event.

Despite our choice of 'war'  for play, from my memory we only every fought once in all those years.

Childhood is a wonderful place, caught in our memories. But we need to live in the now so Rodney I look forward to making friends again with my old friend.

The Little Engine

The Little Engine is a children's story about a train who is attempting to climb a mountain:

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" 

Last weekend I was in Sydney to see if Australia could beat New Zealand in the Rugby,  I specially worn a wallabies cap marked August 28th 1999 -- this was the last time I was "live" at a game where the Wallabies had beaten the AllBlacks.

Sitting with my two sons; we cheered and sang with the 70,000 crowd with the optimism of that little train.  In the end Australia, lost by 1 point and while we didn't win there was the benefit of self-belief and that we are getting closer to the mark.

"I thought I could, I thought I could"

Next year is the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand; a mountain if ever there was one worth scaling and hopefully we then will be chatting:

"I thought I could, I did, I did."

What's in a name?

You know that I am as guilty as most for giving 'nicknames' to my family members. I've never thought about this too much it just is a natural inclination. For a person who grew up with Boobie, Boob, Jordie and other names it might come as a surprise that I would also wish to create these !

Wikipedia defines nickname as a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name, which may sometimes be used simply for convenience (e.g. "Bobby", "Bob", "Rob", or "Bert" for the name Robert). The term hypocoristic is used to refer to a nickname of affection between those in love or with a close emotional bond.

My sister Kerry got the brunt of this when she was young.  It is however a great mnemonic which allows one to remember a name from characteristics of a person.  This usually works really well for me as I meet new people and my recall is pretty good.

Even when I first started dating Anna; I told my newington friends that her name was Margaux. This completely threw them off  !!!

OK now for a quiz;  name this person:

1. Bunny?
2. Beebum?
3. Fatguy Attitude?
4. Bullfrog?
5. Little Gub?
6. Prawn?
7. Jane of the Jungle?
8. Disco Benny?
9. Pumpkin?
10. Kobe Beef?
11. _____ Bear ?
12. Pie Head ?
13. Buzzar?
14. Bee?
15. Samsonite