Harvey - Childhood of an idiot

Harvey family portrait. All seven of us (Dads handlebar moustache was pretty much a family member).

All things considered, I think I turned out fairly normal. The odds were stacked against me, because I am surrounded by madnesshave been all my life. My family are a strange bunch. A lot of people say this, but my family actually ARE a strange bunch. Youll be hearing a lot about these guys who I didnt get to choose. Isnt that the saying? You can choose your friends but not your family?

If I DID get to choose, would I have picked this family? Well, no. Dont be stupid. I would have picked far wealthier people to be my parents. Imagine being born into ridiculous wealth? That sense of entitlement and superiority from day one, without even having to work for it. I would have no problem with that.

Instead, I got a middle-class family. We had all of lifes basic necessities, with the occasional luxury thrown in at birthdays and Christmas. It wasnt an easy upbringing, though, because both Mum and Dad were really strict. I even thought so at the time, when I compared myself with my friends and the freedom they enjoyed, but I could never raise the issue. Bringing it up would have been considered disobedience. Disobedience was punishable by the belt. And since my purpose in bringing it up would be to reduce the amount of time I spent bent over the end of my parents bed waiting for my buttocks to feel that red-hot searing pain, it all seemed a bit counterproductive, so I let that one slide.

My upbringing would definitely have been way easier with the ridiculously wealthy parents I would have chosen if it were an option. Rich kids get punished by having something taken away:

Madison, please put all your toys away and tidy your room or we wont take you skiing in Queenstown this weekend.

Middle-class kids like us never had too much stuff that could be taken off us, so the ultimatum usually went along these lines:

Dominic, put all your toys away and tidy your room or youll get the belt.

And if there were tears that didnt pass the reasonable reasons to cry threshold, we would get this one:

Stop crying or Ill really give you something to cry about.

Still, it was all character building. And as much of a contradiction as this will sound, every blow was delivered with loving intentions. So it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to some of the nicest freaks I know... my family!

There was Dad, Stuart Harvey, a man whose clicking jaw could be heard from anywhere inside our three-bedroom house whenever he decided to eat. Without a word of a lie, you could be in the shower down the hall, with the water running and the bathroom door shut, and you could hear Dads jaw as he walked past.

Then there was the way he banged his plate with his spoon to get every last little bit of Weet-Bix. Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! Us kids would all sit there sighing and thinking, Arrrrrrrgggghhh! Youve got every last little bitcan you stop before you smash the damn plate!

These sounds seemed to get louder and louder as we got older. In hindsight, the volume may not have changedit was just so fucking irritating that over time we became hypersensitive to it.

Mum, Susan Harvey, was a woman who would pluck her bikini line, with tweezers, in the front passenger seat of the car, with four of us kids crammed in the back seat. There were more kids than seatbelts in the back seat... but it was the 1980s, so seatbelts were a bit of a take it or leave it thing. We would go on these family road trips every December as we headed away for the New Years holiday up to Whangamata. Every year, Mum would put her feet up on the dashboard of the car and wind the window down a few centimetres, then pull out pubic hairs one at a time and wave the tweezers outside the window, giving any motorist following too closely a windshield of unwanted black hairs.

Since it happened every single year and we grew up with it, none of us kids ever really paused to think about whether or not it was normal behaviour.

Then there was my older sister, Bridget, whose claim to fame was winning a celebrity look-alike photo contest in the Womans Weekly. Bridge was chuffed with this, and rightly so. On top of the fifteen dollars prize money, Bridge got a lifetime of bragging rights that she looks like famous New Zealand model Rachel Hunter. Now, I dont want to take anything away from Bridgetwith her looks Im sure she could have married an elderly has-been pop star. But it is worth a mention that in the photo she sent which won the contest, she did have an ice-cream in hand and was wearing the same clothes that Rachel wore in the ad she did for Trumpet ice-creams. So in my slightly-mean-spirited-but-mainly-just-honest opinion, a lot of the similarities came down to the props used in the photo. It would be like me drawing a lightning bolt scar on my forehead and putting on round black glasses before telling people I look like Harry Potter. I didnt think my sister looked anything like Rachel Hunter... but once it was published in a nationwide magazine, that was all the proof she needed that I was wrong and that she did, indeed, look like a super model, or at least the closest thing New Zealand has ever had to a super model.

Bridget is two years older than me. Then, two years after I was born, Daniel arrived. Ive never looked into all the traits of the condition known as middle child syndrome but maybe I should. Whatever the hang-ups of a middle child are supposed to be, Ive probably got them.

Dan and I were cellmates. We shared a small room with bunks for our entire childhoods. When Dan was fifteen, we moved to a new house that was big enough for all four children to have their own space. Bridget had left home a while before we moved to this big house, and I was not far off going flatting too. Yep, thats my familyupsizing to a good-sized home suitable for a family of six just before they end up dropping down to a family of four.

Dan and I hated each other, and we fought most days as two people who mutually hated each other tend to do. Being two years older than Dan, I had superior strength and size, but I didnt really have the mongrel in me that Daniel did. Sometimes I wondered if he could somehow have been the spawn of the devil, because he just seemed so angry and calculating. When we had a really big fight, it would often end with Dad using violence to stop the violence. We would each be made to lie face down on his bed for a lash with the belt. This thing hurt like hell. The skin would throb and sting for quite some time afterwards. I was petrified of it and would often start crying and pleading for a stay of execution, trying to cover my bottom with my hands and making it near impossible for Dad to get a clean shot at his fleshy target.

Young Devil Spawn Dan, on the other hand, would lie down on the bed without any fuss or fanfare and, as cold as ice, turn his head and look up to Dad and say something bone-chilling like You dont scare me... bring it on! On his really angry days, he would even heckle Dad afterwards: Pfft, is that all you got? It didnt even hurt.

Finally, there was the baby of the family, Charlotte. A woman who has had a lifelong obsession with the scent of earwax. She would have been six or seven when she had this delicious but disgusting epiphany. The whole family was in Dads car going somewhere. Probably Whangamata. I cant recall if Mum had already waxed her bikini line or not. Out of the blue, young Char put her finger in her ear and scratched an itch or did whatever it was she needed to do. Then, after removing her finger from her ear, she waved it under her nose for a second or two before putting her hands on her lap with a thinking look on her face. She then went back for seconds, sliding her finger in the ear again and beneath her nostrils, this time for a far deeper inhale.