When I used to be twelve...

Life in our street was a neverending adventure, as far as I was concerned. Not least, because it was populated by a band of boys who roamed the streets wild and free, playing what seemed like endlessly wild and dangerous games.

Every now and again, a miraculous discovery would change the face of play, introducing a brand new dimension to otherwise ordinary days.

Not very many of the boys on our block were credited with a Discovery - but each aspired to produce at least one in their lifetime. Much like a submission to the Nobel Price committee, hopeful boys would periodically deliver inventions or discoveries to the bretheren for approval.

Standards were high. Dreams were dashed. Many were disappointed but acceptance would guarantee legendary status on the street: Discoveries were elevated to iconic status, shared by all, kept in secret places and revered by everyone for as long as it could hold our imaginations:

Four plastic trays with 96 shiny .22 bullet cartridges, regimentally kept in batches of 24. These were taken out regularly and played with at length: We would divide them amongst us, and play shoot-em-up by throwing the cartridge as hard as we could at our victim, carefully collecting them all after the carnage, lovingly replacing each 'bullet' in its hole on the tray.

"Aaaarrggghhh! I'm out of amo!" became just about the sexiest words on the street.

Then, there was the metal object, most likely from "outaspace", as decided by mutual consent, after much debate. Square, the size of half a brick and twice as heavy - it had a copper rod sticking through it, which, if pushed through to the other side would MAGNETISE it!

A dog's skeleton, completely intact, canines grimacing in the sun and an abandoned pram, still sporting all four wheels, formed the rest of the prized Discovery collection.

It was with much pomp and circumstance therefore, that I was invited to view a New Discovery one day. It was a sign of my rising social status on the block, that the boys even thought of me - let alone consider me worthy of sharing a New Discovery.

I was duly blindfolded and marched to the derelict shack behind our row of houses. After vowing utter secrecy, I was allowed to remove the blindfold to behold the precious object: painted on the wall, was a lifesize portrait of Donald Duck in the most elaborate, bright, Disney-esque colours and detail.

It was magnificent! The solid colours glowed almost otherworldly in the dusty, crumbling room - a far cry from the murky comic books and black and white television screens that was our world. For a moment, it felt as if you hold your breath, Donald Duck would jump off the wall and splutter: "Hello folks!"

A moment of awe passed...

"Oh yeah" I shrugged, "I made that when I used to be twelve."

A stunned silence descended. I, more stunned than any of the boys gaping at me: confusion, disbelief and awe, jostling for space on their faces.

Like most of them, I was turning seven later that year.

"Wh... when did you used to be twelve?" asked one boy, saucer eyed.

Now, I knew for definite that I DID used be twelve. Obviously a long, long time ago - which explained why I couldn't remember much of that time.

However - I was pretty sure I would have remembered doing THAT painting.... but since the lie was out there, I couldn't bloody well retrieve it.

"Oh, a looooong time ago"


I'm not sure whether the pendulum of faith swung in my favour that day because of my bare-faced confidence, or the fact that I was a girl, which imbued me with a certain aura of weirdness/anything is possible.

The stroke of genius is breathtaking: firstly, the painting was so incredibly fantastic and ethereal, that it could only have been done by some sort of mythical creature, someone that could only be TWELVE - an age that seemed completely unatainable from where we were, in the SINGLE DIGIT age group.

Since there was no-one on our street, or in fact, in our neighbourhood or on this planet, that was as old as TWELVE - no-one alive could contest that it was completely plausible that it is an age that occurs in some parrallel universe, in reverse chronology.

Additionally, in case they felt that I should be tested, I reasoned very honestly that it was impossible for me to create such a painting at this moment, since I am only six!

Clearly, when I was twelve, (er...years before I was seven) my painting skills were far superior – as one would expect from a twelve year old.

The concept was so incredibly confusing and audacious, that it didn't occur to any of the boys to question the veracity of it.

Whatever the reason, in one master stroke, I overcame every possible obstacle, including being a girl, in my quest of becoming a fully accepted as "one of the boys".

One could almost say, I was admitted into the male inner sanctum, because I "dazzled them with science."

...Still works today : )