Do I have funny fingers? Do I? DO I? Why didn’t anybody tell me I’ve got funny fingers?! I’ve been staring at them for ages and still can’t get my head round their funnyness. They’re all CHUBBY and CROOKED and how could my friends let me go waving them about in people’s faces when anyone in their right mind would be hiding the little monstrosities in their pockets. Holy shit, what if the freshies at coll are calling me the Funny Fingers Girl?

SOB! Now I know why I’ve never been able to play the piano very well, and why I seem to spend bloody forever at the keyboard correcting a frillion typos. It’s cuz the little misshapen freaks are so bent out of place I hit two keys at a time!

What happened to them? Was I born this way? Did my pregnant mom consume so many fish fingers that mine resemble them soggy and squashed? As a toddler, did my fingers get caught in the door? Repeatedly? Did all the fat from my McBurgers receive a P.R. to migrate to the ends of my hands? Did I at some point catch my digits in a blender and have a cross-eyed surgeon reattach them bit by bit like a jigsaw puzzle?

There is something seriously wrong here... Oh god, the freaky things are gonna scare everyone away and I’m gonna die ALL ALONE in a miserable apartment with my pet gerbils chewing on the stumps for dinner.

Life can be so unfair.

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My mom helped my 7-yr old sis to compose a poem for school, and this is what they came up with:

Kangaroo, kangaroo
dashing to the loo.
Kangaroo, kangaroo
needs to do a poo.

God, now I know where my toilet humour comes from.

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Mmm…you gotta love rugby tourneys. The only thing better than watching hot kiwis do the haka…is watching hot kiwis do the haka with their shirts off! *SQUEEEEEEEEEEE*

I was floating, lost in a sea of rugby players. Whoever said drowning’s a traumatic experience must’ve forgotten to bring a camera along and had to go through the ordeal of not having piccies of shirtless kiwis.







But where’s Joe? Joe who was ever-so-teasable, Joe with the tiny freckles and broken nose, who went red every time someone asked for an autograph, who got tricked into telling another guy he had a sexy arse, who stressed out over how to smuggle 40 pirated DVD’s out of the country, who laughed at all my jokes and consoled me after a scrappy game. Joe whose number I forgot to ask for, whose email addy I didn’t write down, who hugged me once and left me wishing for more. What about him? And I’ve only got one pic of him too.

Goddammit woman! So which one’s Joe then?!

Right, no more teasing.

I wanna fly over to NZ now.

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I’ve just had my first encounter with a cop. And no, it didn’t involve handcuffs and flashing lights.

I’d parked my car in a tight (illegal) spot yesterday. It was at a rugby tourney, so all the proper lots’d been taken up. And I couldn’t not park, as I was a lines(wo)man/touch judge for the same tourney. So technically, I wasn’t at fault. I should have demanded a reserved lot or they could bloody well judge their lines themselves.

When I returned to my parking spot later in the evening, I found a different car waiting for me. This unfamiliar-looking vehicle sported a rather odd-shaped rear, with dents along its side. Its bumper looked a little wonky too, barely hanging on in fact. And there was garish green paint scraped all over the right side of the car, marring its lovely silver finish. Rather distasteful really. Some people really did have the oddest tastes.

I turned around and clicked on the car remote. And heard the funny car beeping behind me. Holyjesusshitwasthatmycar?!!!!! License plate? Check. Honda emblem ripped off the side window? Check. I collapsed to the ground and burst into tears.

After a refreshing cry, I picked up a largish rock and went on a hunt for a green car with silver scrapes down its left. No luck. The bastard must’ve torn off after he murdered my car. I hope he managed to drive himself off a bridge later that night.

I walked desolately back to my car and got in. After closing the door gently (in case it fell off), I drove carefully to a police station to lodge a report, all the while keeping an eye out for a stray bumper lying on the road behind. And it was there that I met the cop who’d give the word ‘daft’ a whole new meaning.

He had a toothpick in his mouth and a gleam in his eye. Not the gleam of shrewdness however, it was the glare of the tv reflecting off the vacant stare from an equally vacant mind. A dimwitted cow would have looked a frillion times more intelligent next to the Daft Cop.

No matter. I had faith in the force. These people were the ones I’d depend on if I were kidnapped and left in the boot of a clunker to die. I took a hopeful breath and described to the DC what had happened and handed him some pictures I’d taken of my poor Honda’s misery. He peered at them and nodded to himself as if this sort of thing occurred all the time. Then he looked at me appraisingly. My heart leapt. Perhaps I’d misjudged him. It wasn’t the empty stare of a halfwit I’d seen, maybe it was the preoccupied stare of a man lost in thought, trying to solve the myriad of cases on his desk. As hope dawned on my face, he cleared his throat. He was about to speak! I waited with bated breath…

“The paint. It’s yellow.”

I blinked. “Umm, no. It’s green actually. The car which got mine was probably green.”

“Why is there yellow paint on your car?”

“Nono, it’s green. And it’s from the car which hit mine”.

“Is your car yellow?”

“Is it wha-? It’s silver! Look at it!”

The DC glared at me. “I meant was it yellow before you painted it silver?”

“No! It was silver! It’s always been silver! And that’s not yellow, it’s green, green! From the other car!”

Somehow, something finally got through to him. “Hang on a tic, that paint’s green! Do you have any green cars at home?”

“Wha-?! No! It’s green because the car – That. Hit. It. Was. GREEN.”

“Maybe your gate’s green. Did you reverse into it?”

“No I didn’t bloody reverse into my gate! I parked my car and it was fine and when I got back, it wasn’t fine anymore! A green car hit it!”

“No, wait!” His brow furrowed as a new theory hit him. “Maybe…maybe another car hit yours. And maybe…it was green!”

He smirked at me in satisfaction. I could only stare back in absolute flummox. I hoped to god I’ll never be tied up in the boot of someone’s car.

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The other day, a lecturer of mine gave us a horrible assignment to complete. We were to write about a childhood memory. The horror. I was forced to revisit the darkest corners of my mind where my traumatic experiences are kept locked behind sturdy doors. Where I hide all memories of my childhood.

It was a beautiful cool evening. I was at a park with my parents. But this wasn’t your average park with crummy swingsets and scraggly trees which wouldn’t have offered relief to a scorched squirrel. No, this was a Park. Lovely tall trees with great leafy branches spread protectively over those nearby, squirrels included. A charming pond, with duckies splashing cheerfully in it. Lush green grass – the kind that makes you want to lie on your back and roll around like a dog.

But rolling was the last thing on my mind that evening. I was four years old and bored to tears. The lousy park didn’t have a swingset. I scowled and scuffed my way to the pond where I tossed some rocks moodily at the ducks. Unfortunately, my aim at that age was such that I might as well have been trying to hit the ice cream man at the other end of the park. Who I was also not allowed to approach as it was too close to dinnertime. My mood darkened even further, and I turned away to search for an easier target.

Just then, a movement caught my eye. I walked over to the edge of the pond to investigate. A tortoise! Paddling sedately in the shallow water. It obviously wanted to follow me home. I thought of my previous pet tortoises. Rather entertaining creatures, even if they were absolute rubbish at surviving 7-floor falls. Still, they made pretty patterns on the ground.

I poked the tortoise experimentally. Perhaps I should have introduced myself first, for it seemed instantly peeved and chomped down on the offending finger.

I flew to my feet in shock and indignation, my captive finger yanking the feral creature out of the water. I tried to dislodge it by shaking my hand violently. The hellbeast responded by grinding its slavering jaws even more firmly into my fragile flesh. It evidently wanted my finger as a trophy…if it didn’t drown on my blood leaking steadily down its throat first.

I did the only thing left for me to do in that situation. I howled and ran for Daddy. Wailing, I charged across the park. Blinded by tears of pain and anger, I tripped over some brat’s inflatable ball and crashed to the ground. The impact left me with skinned knees, and wrenched the Favoured Pet of Lucifer off, sending it sailing into some bushes.

I sniffled and clambered slowly to my feet. My finger hurt like blazes. I felt utterly and downright wretched. Would I ever recover from the horrific attack? Even my vengeance had been denied. The Diabolical Shelled Fiend had escaped, leaving only a tortoise-shaped hole in the bushes and a bloody strip of finger flesh.

I sniffled again. Then I spied a sharp-looking stick by my feet and the blasted ball which had got in my way. A loud bang soon ensued. Huh. I felt better already.

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I have a sore bum.

Let me explain. A coupla nights ago, I was at a little drinking session at a friend’s place. I should point out beforehand that I never drink. Not excessively anyway. Apart from that one time I ended up puking twice and nearly passed out in a corridor. But that was a whole year ago.

Anyhoo, back to the drinking session. I knew my limits. So I stuck to little paper cups of vodka-soda mix. One after another, in rapid succession. It was not long before I finally came to realize something. I am absolutely pathetic with alcohol. Suddenly, I was surrounded by best friends. The only thing stopping me from throwing my arms around each and every one of them and laying on them a sloppy wet one was the fear of spilling my drink. Everything said that night made such sense. It was as if the secrets of the universe had been let loose upon our wee minds. I’ve since forgotten what they were, but I hazily remember vague remarks about Raphael Santi, Grantz, and irate neighbours.

And so the night wore on. A group of us sat in a circle on the road, singing along merrily to someone’s guitar. We sat there for a long time, interrupted only by the odd ‘excuse me, I’ve gotta go throw up’. Some people came by – we thought they wanted to join us in our deep discussion of the merits of the road as a bed, but no, they were only morning joggers peering at us with thinly veiled suspicion.

When we finally trooped off to bed, I was worried that I’d oversleep and miss picking my kid sisters up from school at three. Shouldn’t have bothered. I woke up at nine thirty and couldn’t get back to sleep again. Not because I wanted to get an early start on the road, but because I spent the next three hours with my head in the toilet bowl, hurling my guts out at every fifteen-minute interval. I puked till there was nothing left to puke out. And then I puked some more. And yet some more. My stomach felt like a wrung-out dishcloth. I hurled so much, I could feel abs starting to develop.

I finally admitted defeat at noon and had a friend drive me to the doctor’s, where I threw up another two times. He took one look at my tongue and pronounced me dehydrated. Woohoo. That didn’t sound too bad. I told him to give me some pills and I’d be on my merry way. Silly billy, he said. How did I think I’d keep the pills down long enough for them to work? No worries, he had just the thing. One jab and my face would finally have some time off from the inside of the throne. A jab? As in a needle stuck in my fragile flesh? Not on your life, mister. I was up and running in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. But before I could reach the door, I stopped short, the sudden motion upsetting my already rolling stomach. Big mistake, he mistook my abrupt halt for surrender and led (dragged) me over to his sickbed thing.

Fine. If I was gonna go through the ordeal, I’d at least do it with my dignity intact. I held my breath and rolled my sleeve up. At which point he gave me an odd look and shook his head.

Dr Evil: I need you to lie down.
Slightly Terrified Me: Why? Will that help?
Dr Evil: Not really, no. But I’ll be administering the jab on your tushie.
Definitely Terrified Me: *Whimpers*
Fraulein Nurse: Listen to the doctor, dear. *Forces me down*
Very Terrified Me: *Whimpers*
Dr Evil: *Jabs*
In Agony Me: *Howls*
Dr Evil: There you go. Run along now, you lil’ minx.
Still In Agony Me: I’m never drinking again.

Not till the next alcohol session, at any rate.

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In my 19 years of life, I have learnt a thing or two. And now, I shall bestow this wisdom upon thee.

theZebra’s 10 Rules to Live By:

1. Always sit with your back to the wall or facing a mirror. You’ll be the first to know if a deranged, gun-toting maniac comes rushing in. And never sit by a window. There are too many people outside to keep an eye on.

2. When at the ATM, be sure to keep one hand braced on the machine at all times. This way, if a mugger was to sneak up behind you and attempt to bash your head into the screen, your hand would, at the very least, buffer your fragile forehead. True, you’d most likely end up with five broken fingers. But hey, you’ve still got one good hand left to rip the mugger’s nose off and feed it to him.

3. Cover your ears when using the flush in an airplane loo. Or make sure to keep well away from the flush button when bonking someone (or being bonked) in that cramped space. Joining the ranks of the Mile High Club’s not worth a heart attack or ruptured eardrums.

4. Do not step beyond the red line at the driving range. Golf club heads can be very hard…and very painful.

5. Never be the only person in a swimming pool. It’s a well-known fact that this will open a hidden trapdoor, which will reveal a big dark hole leading to the Underwater Lair of the (hold your breath) GIANT CHLORINEWATER OCTOPUS. With your flipperless feet, you’ll never escape its Tentacles of Death. It’ll drag you own into its Underwater Lair, where it’ll then proceed to devour your drownded corpse. Beware. There’s one in every pool.

6. Don’t piss your waiter off, or any restaurant staff for that matter. It’s just not a smart move. They handle your food, and you never really know what goes on in the kitchen at the back.

7. Learn from others’ mistakes. Don’t stick your hand down and don’t let your head get too close to sidewalk sewers/drains. They’re famous hunting grounds of psychopathic clowns.

8. Somehow, I don’t think drowning in puke is on anyone’s list of ‘Ways I Wouldn’t Mind Kicking The Bucket’. So if someone starts to heave their guts out while flat on his/her back, show what a true friend you are and flip ‘im/’er over. Unless the puker’s a sworn enemy whose gruesome death you’ve been plotting for the past few months. In which case, you didn’t read this.

9. Before you flip another driver the bird, check to make sure she’s not your mom’s friend or a friend’s mom. That’s just asking for trouble.

10. The hot guy you just met? Yeah, the one with the great clothes and perfect hair. The one whom you just spent hours in conversation with, where everything he said made perfect sense to you and vice versa. The one who knows exactly what napkin rings are. The one whose number you’re about to ask for. Don’t. He’s gay.

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The Sanzar Home Tests. Live. On Astro. With reruns. *Points a hoof at all the footie fans and sticks her tongue out* You mean they’re only playing the Euro 2004 on regular tv? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh (self-satisfied sigh), Saturday was a bee-you-tee-fool day. Watching the All Blacks trample England to the ground was incredible. Just. Utter. Bliss. I laughed and laughed till my hooves curled. And the Springboks killing Ireland was icing on the already so-sweet-my-teeth-hurt cake.

Honestly. Barely a month ago, I was screaming bloody murder at half the team and wishing all sorts of horrible deaths upon them for daring to score against the Crusaders. But the moment they pull on black jerseys, I’m struck suddenly by an immense sense of love and worship for them. Especially when they crush the Poms with try after try after try. Spencer, Rokocoko and Howlett. As much as I hate the Blues, you gotta salute them for producing players like these. Even if they’re cocky bastards.

But of all the people on the field, I’ve gotta say that the one person I like the best is the referee. Love those guys. Could be all that power they hold. Or it could be those cute shirts they invariably wear. And of course, it always a great help if they’re yummy like Steve Walsh. Still, it’s awfully fun when a player gets too rough and the ref gets that cute disapproving look on his face. Like he’s just witnessed his son bonk another kid in the sandbox with a bucket. “C’mon lads, we’ve got a few minutes left. Let’s keep it clean, alright?” And then to watch as the ‘lads’, who’re incidentally the size of telephone poles, hang their heads (dripping blood on their boots) in shame and promise never to do it again, and please daddy could we go for ice-cream later?

Now, if only someone would bonk the Wallabies on the head. Hard. With a heavy iron bucket.

Quote of the day: “And here comes O’Gara, and O’Connell…along with the rest of the O’s.” – Commentator lost in pack of Irish players (South Africa vs. Ireland)

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