I ran away to the circus when I was about 9 or 10.

I had no desire to join a circus, but as they were performing nearby at the time, it seemed a thing to do, especially as my parents had already indicated they had no intention of taking me, for some odd reason I could not quite fathom.

Well, I thought, fuck the both of you, I’ll go by myself.

And so I did.

It was about 7.30 at night. To get there, I jumped over the back fence, and had to cut through a primary school playing oval, then through another fence and across a public football oval, and then about a mile and a half up a road that bordered on an industrial estate, then about a mile more of suburban streets until there were a bunch of vacant lots and there, among them, was the circus.

In a whopping great big circus tent.

So I went around the back of the tent, lifted up a flap, crawled under and through, found a seat, and watched the show for a bit.

About ten minutes later, what appeared to be half the police force of NSW arrived, took me out, and returned me to the parents, who were, as you might expect, none too pleased.

The parents next door neighbour was a cop, you see. Ten minutes after I’d pissed off, they’d had him onto it.

He was rather good at his job, I’d have to say.

…

…

During Years 9 and 10, I spent more time away from high school than at it.

There were two reasons for this: one, puberty had made me downright antsy and given me a bad attitude and, two, I simply hated high school.

So some days, I just didn’t bother going. I’d set off in the morning, meet a mate a couple blocks away, and we’d spend our time investigating the surrounds of our thrilling suburban environment, all housing commission flats, industrial estates and red tile roofs as far as our hairless little chins could crane.

There was a creek running through one bunch of vacant lots, and we found an eel in it, so we’d throw rocks at it for a while, and then we’d set about playing with the rockets we’d made, fueling the things with whatever combination of stuff we had in our chemistry sets, because everyone had a chemistry set at that time and the big attraction of them for most of us was that if you mixed a bit of this with a bit of that and a bit of something else, you could blow some shit up.

So we made some rocketships, shoved a fuse in them, lit them, and waited to see if they’d fly. Mostly, they’d just blow up on the spot, or fizz about on the ground in circles.

At least we tried, dammit.

Other days, we’d set out to explore the seemingly vast network of storm-water drains and channels that snaked through the suburbs of Sydney’s south-west. We’d set out from somewhere near the high school and often find ourselves as far away as Tempe or Sydenham and then turn around and come back.

Productivity-wise, I don’t think such endeavours had much going for them, but it certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sometimes we’d take torches. Sometimes, we’d tape our torches to the top of some plastic helmets, the fearless and highly experienced exploratory team wisely wending their way through the open concrete bowels of Sydney’s rainwater run-off systems.

What an inspirational challenge that was.

When I did bother going to school to deal with whatever banal bullshit was considered an adequate enough education in the 1970’s to qualify for a life’s work at the Commonwealth fucking Bank and a tin fucking watch after 40 fucking years of grief from some cheap cunt in a polyester shirt and a fucking Snoopy tie, I’d often walk home at the end of the school day with a mate.

Along the train tracks, the suburban train tracks upon which trains would regularly tootle down, say every 15 or 20 minutes or so.

There was one part of the tracks that ran between a steep incline on both sides and one day, our timing was a bit off, and we found ourselves on this part of the line with a train hurtling along behind us, the driver furiously tooting his horn, and we ran like we’d never run before until we’d come clean of the incline, scuttled up the bank and collapsed in a heaving, giggling heap on the grass for about thirty minutes after.

There was no way you could just squeeze yourself against the incline and wait for the train to pass by, there was only about six or seven inches gap between the two, you’d end up with no kneecaps and an instant circumcision if you tried.

We did make a habit of doing that for a short while, though.

Because it was fucking good fun, is why.

Tags: child-rearing, childhood, Lenore Skenazy, overparenting