NO ONE LOVES US

My parents often told these stories to friends and relatives. I was not sure whether it was to demonstrate the difference between my older sister, Judith and myself or just to make conversation. Judith was 18 months older than I was and I cannot remember her getting into trouble during our early years.

The first one is when we lived in Parker Street and I was about three. Mum went to the letterbox and on discovering that there was no mail, she went inside saying "No one loves us".

After about 10 minutes she came into the dining room where I was standing by the table with a bunch of mail and a big smile saying 'lots of people love us now'.

I had been to all the letterboxes in our street block and taken the mail from their box and brought it home apparently with great excitement. My excitement wasn't shared by Mum as she then had to deliver the mail to the respective houses and apologise.

Apparently over my young years I did nothing to improve neighbourly love. I once heard Mum say that 'if I had a daughter like Judy Ryan, I'd give her a whack with my strap'. Well, why should I be the only one getting whacked! So I went over to Mrs Ryan, knocked on the door and told her what Mum had said. She was furious and told Mum so and I don't think they ever spoke to one another again.

Another time our friends, the Whiteleys, who lived out of town about 5 km called in to our house, as they often did on their way home from Mass on Sundays. Mum had said, before they arrived, that they should not have taken their daughter, Elizabeth, to Mass as she had the measles and could infect other children. SO, on their arrival, I went out and told Mrs Whiteley what Mum had said. This time, however, they apparently had quite a good laugh so the friendship was not ruined.

My parents didn't tell this story as they, of course, didn't know:

I was around five and my friend, Judy Ryan, (girl in the above story but despite my mother's opinion, she obviously was not told about it or definitely didn't hold a grudge against me) had a brother, Michael, who was about three. I had never seen a penis and was pretty curious to see one. Judy organised to show me Michael's but despite giving him my total allowance of weekly lollies, when it came time to reveal, he had not only eaten his sweets but refused to show me. He was so stubborn and no amount of coaxing could shift his shorts.

I was 11 this time and my maternal grandmother lived with us. There were five girls, my mother, my grandmother and dad and we always had dinner together in the dining room each night with my father sitting, of course, at the head of the table. I often think that it must have been why he was always fairly quiet. He would start the conversation asking us what had happened during the day. I couldn't wait for my turn as I had some really startling news.

The conversation went like this:

"Hey, Dad! You'll never guess what Nora Splite (a friend in my class who had been away from school for a few days) told me today. She said that she had been off school because she had been bleeding for five days. Hey, Dad! What a liar! If she had been bleeding for five days, she'd be dead. Wouldn't she, Dad? Dead!"

When there was silence at the table with no one seeming to take any interest in my story just concentrating on their dinner, I was pretty disappointed that they didn't think that this was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard. I ended my story with -

AND she even said that it was going to happen to her every month from now on! DAD have you ever heard such a lie?

Dad made no comment and changed the subject to include one of my other sisters who would not have had anything as interesting as my story and I decided not to join in any more conversations that night.