I’m a scary person.

I’m a very scary person. In fact, people have been known to duck down aisles to avoid me seeing them.  It's not (I hope!) because I am so terrible looking or have bad breath or anything visual.  It's because I do this strange thing of actually TALK to
people.

Yes, I know.  Weird, huh?  I actually talk to people beyond the hi-how-are-you-today-fine-thank-you realm of words.

In my small pond of supermarket shopping, there isn’t much choice but Coles, Woolworths or the independent chain of IGA. 
I shop at IGA just to be contrary.  I don’t like big brand monopoly, so my dollars go toward “keeping the bastards honest” as one political slogan once said.  Plus there are two other reasons I shop at IGA, rather than Coles or Woolies. 
 
Firstly, because of brand choice.  It sounds strange, but there's actually more choice at IGA.  At Coles you either buy the Coles brand, the Coles Premium brand or the other tomato-and-onion-flavoured crap brand that no one likes and that gives you heartburn for days.  Not much choice after all.

Secondly, I like knowing where the items are on the shelf.  I tried shopping at Woolies once – for a good six months I stuck it out. Each week I went in they had moved the items around so that I could never find the item I wanted, and I ended up walking out without ever locating or buying it.  It’s a wonder we didn’t starve.

Anyway (sidetracked much?) my local IGA is small and employs a great team of young people – mostly under the age of twenty-three.  These people are usually studying at university, taking a gap-year, or some are just trying to decide what to do with their lives.  Yes – it may surprise you, but I do stop to talk to these people and ask them about themselves.

I am essentially a cheery person.  Once at a mother’s group, we played a game where we had to write a few adjectives to describe each of the other people in the group.  Guess who scored the adjective “bubbly”, from nearly every single person? 
Yep!  That was me.  I talk.  I like to talk.  I like to make people smile.

My shopping trips are usually long winded.  I stop to chat to the staff in the store: New boyfriend yet? I like the new hair! How did the exams go?  Have you found a new place to rent?  When is your husband back from working away?  I also stop to tickle the toddler who is making her mother’s life miserable, whining for a lolly.  I play aisle tag with the woman who is shopping in the opposite direction to me, laughing as we cross each time.  I playfully tell the elderly man that I still have my learner plates on when it comes to managing to make my trolley roll forward and that he will have to watch out for my bad driving.  They all smile.

One staff member of our IGA was a bit of a tough nut to crack.  His name is Sean – he’s in second year university, doesn’t have a girlfriend and blushes madly when I talk to him.  The first day I said hello to him, he scuttled away in fright, and probably went home and told his mum about the strange woman in the store who spoke to him. The second time I saw him, I asked him what his name was because he wasn’t wearing a name badge.  He stammered and stumbled and scuttled away again.  The third time, I greeted him with a “Hi, Sean!” and watched him frantically try to remember if he knew me or not.

The sun broke through for me on the day I turned down the aisle where he was working, and he glanced up. It was a small glance, just to see who was entering his aisle, but he stopped, looked back at me and smiled. He even managed “Hi” without my prompting.  Success!

That was over a year ago. Recently I was shopping and ran into him as he stacked fizzy drinks.  He looked up with a happy, genuine smile and said, “Hey!  How did the book release go?”  I laughed and gushed about how fantastic the reviewers of my book were, and how nice people were being about my little story.  I consider Sean my success.  It took a while, but now I can say that I can put a smile on someone’s face.

Smiling is important. It releases “happy hormones” into our blood steam and makes us feel good.  It’s a brain orgasm.  I like orgasms – all types of orgasms.  I like causing orgasms.  (Dirty minds much?)  I like to make people smile and laugh and have fun.

Today someone told me he loved my story, Loving Jay.  He said he read it on the bus, on the train and while waiting at the train station. He said he laughed out loud, pinching his nose and trying to stop from snorting in public.  He laughed while he told me this, and smiled broadly.  That made me smile and laugh in return.  Brain orgasms all around – the best way to be.

I can’t remember the first book I ever read.  In fact, I cannot even remember my mother ever reading to me.  But somebody must’ve, because I had a love for books before I even hit school. Being the youngest child in the family, I’m sure that there was someone who regularly read to me, but I don’t remember it, and I find that rather sad.  It would’ve been a lovely memory to retain.

What I do remember, is going to the library with my mother.  I must’ve been either four or five, because I wasn’t yet in school, yet all my brothers and sisters were, so it was just Mum and me.  Our library was on a steep hill and I would race up the wheelchair access ramp, then clatter back down the steps and tell Mum to hurry up. Walking into that place was bliss. There was a hush about the library that a quiet house cannot replicate.  I would dash to the children’s book boxes and rummage through, looking for my old friends within them.

A story my mother likes to relate is of going to the library with me as a child.  She tells us that she had to give me thirty minutes warning, because there would always be tears and tantrums from me.  I never wanted to give the books back, so she needed thirty minutes to persuade me to show her where I had hidden my precious treasures.

As a child, I grew up on Disney books and fairytales.  Cinderella was my utmost favourite.  I still have the book that showed me
Cinderella, and I now read it to my children, hoping to instill the love of fiction into them.

By the time I was nine I had read all The Famous Five books that my library carried, plus all of them in my school library too.  By ten I’d read every single Judy Blume book I could find. By the time I was eleven I was onto Dolly Fiction paperbacks.  
 
When I was thirteen, in desperation to keep me occupied at her house, my sister gave me my first Mills and Boon novel to read – Rise of an Eagle, by Margaret Way.  I still have that book.  I keep it for the memories.  It was wonderful – it was Cinderella for grownups.

But what did books mean to me?  It meant a life for me beyond my four walls of my bedroom.

You see, looking back on my childhood, I was extremely lonely and very isolated.  How can the youngest child of nine children be lonely? It was because of extreme allergies, something that twenty-five years ago we were struggling to understand.

Let me put it into perspective for you.  In the skin-prick test, if your reaction to the allergen is more than 1mm, they say you are allergic.  If it is more than 2mm, you should seek specialist treatment.  On my first test, they were unable to measure more than 11mm because it was merging into my other reactions.  I was allergic – highly allergic – and my top five reactors? Dust mite, horses, grasses, cats and dogs.

What a pity I grew up on a horse farm.

My mother didn’t believe in medication, so in order to survive my teen years, I locked myself in my room and never came out. 
Dramatic? Definitely.  Did it save my life?  You’d better believe it.

The written word became my best friend.  Those people between the pages of my book I was able to have a conversation with. They were nice.  They didn’t cause me to cough, sniff, wheeze, cry or any of the other reactions that simply talking to my family in their horse-covered clothes would bring on.

They were my sanity.

Those nights that I struggled to breathe, not wanting to go to sleep because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up in the morning? 
Those books sat with me.

It wasn’t until I was eighteen and sought medical help for my condition that I appreciated how bad I was. I’ve gone through years of desensitization programs, and swallowed thousands upon thousands of anti-histamine tablets.  Now that I can control my environment, I can own cats and birds.  Horses are still bad though – one hour is the maximum time I can spend at
my sister’s house, and a simple walk through her stables sets me off.

Being able to string together a couple of paragraphs and put it in a book for another person to read? It's like passing on that gift that was given to me all those years ago.  It’s paying forward.  I like to think of someone in a dark place in their lives, being able to open a book – perhaps my book? – and survive their darkness until the morning light comes.  So if you are struggling, open a page and lose yourself for a while.  The stories are always there.  Some make you cry.  I hope mine make you laugh.  But survive.