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I was brought up by my stepdad and mother. She had seen a lot of unfaithfulness in her life resulting in an addiction to computer games and chain smoking. In her later years, she took to baby-sitting but it’s not the legal sort. Now days, to even baby sit, you’ve got to apply for god knows what sort of licensing and what not but in those days, it’s just an agreement between neighbours. After all, if she can bring up 5 kids without any visible trouble, then what is another one or two babies.
My family is middle class, legit. No holidays. No extravagant parties with $100 cakes. Birthdays back then, were simple affairs involving family, relatives and absolutely no friends. The operational word here being simple.
Simple to the point, there was really not enough money to go around at all. Don’t talk about new uniforms. I outwore the uniforms on myself till I had to patch up the uniforms. It was like that. I had to suck it up. But socks were another thing. While washing my own clothes, because no one else in the house did it for me, I had to take care of my socks or get it stolen by my other siblings.
Underwear was another thing altogether.
I used and reused my undies till the holes in the undies had holes.
Often, I had to realign the crown jewels to ensure that it didn’t stick out uncomfortably when I didn’t want it to. Little did I know it would lead to interesting developments much later on.
I grew up taking solace in a bunch of soft toys and relying on comic books for role models. Nothing came close. What about the stepdad you ask? Well, he worked a security job. You know the sort, 12-hour shifts. He something took nights and sometimes days but when he was home, he was in bed and resting. We didn’t see much of him. I later learnt that he wasn’t always around because he was busy being a dad to another bunch of kids and their mum. That’s right.
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