I Confess ...

Not sure if I'm enough of a bad-ass to make this a regular feature, but we'll see how I go.

A couple of the blogs I browse puport to be 'Confessional'. Ooooh, juicy. Or not. I'm not going to out them (they're awesome) but when I think of confessions I don't think about Oklahoma sunrises, Frito-smelling dog paws or the cutest two-year old you ever met.

Before you get excited, I won't be confessing anything that will ruin my marriage or send me to the slammer but I do have a few things I need to get of my chest. It's all about closure baby.

Many, many years ago, we had a milk bar near where I lived. Teenagers went there after the movies for milkshakes and sometimes, if we were lucky, we bought hot chips after Brownies meetings. What I remember the most though, was the endless glass-fronted cabinet full of lollies. We would walk up and down and choose one of those, one of those, one of those and they would go into a little brown bag. Lollies used to be two for a cent, so I'm guessing twenty cents would have filled one of those little bags and lasted me all afternoon. Were lollies bigger then or was my mouth much, much smaller? There were also bigger white bags but I realised even then that I would never be the recipient of a white bag full of lollies. It would have made my head explode.

Anyway, around the same time we had a girl at our school, who I will call Justine - partly because of the Duggar reference I am about to make but mostly because it was her name. Now, obviously, Justine was not a Duggar. It was the late 70s - Michelle was still a cheerleader and Jim-Bob was just a young Christian looking for love. But Justine could have been a Duggar : super long plait, Liberty print smocks, sensible sandals, weird. And on top of the Duggar similarities, she smelled like wee. A lot.

But (and here's where the story heats up) while looking like a Duggar and smelling like a nappy, Justine arrived at school several times a week carrying a bag of lollies from the afore-mentioned store. Not the brown bag, the white one. Full. In the morning.

I'm not sure how the next bit happened but somehow I had to ask her why she always had the lollies, how much they cost etc. And she told me that her parents owned the shop and she lived there. Lived there! And then she said I could come over after school that day and have as many lollies as I wanted. I was in, no matter what it cost in social-standing.

I could barely wait for school to finish and as we walked from school through the shopping centre I was dreaming of what I would eat first and if I might be able to take some home, and maybe whether I could fill a bath tub with cobbers and float in it. I know that Justine was talking to me but I couldn't tell you what she was saying.

When we got to the shop, she walked past it and I thought we must be going in some secret entrance round the back but she kept walking. I asked her why we weren't going in and she told me she didn't really live there, she stole coins from her mum's purse most mornings and bought the lollies.

I stood there, in the middle of the Homer St afternoon rush, flicked my Farrah Fawcett fringe, turned and walked away without a word.

And I've felt awful ever since.

If this is the lamest confession you've ever heard, I would suggest you stop reading my blog asap as there's plenty more where this came from!