It's strange. The most life altering experience I've ever had is one of the few I can't recollect at all. I pride myself on my ability to remember in detail pivotal events in my life. Kindergarten, my first day at primary school, all like photographs tattooed in my memory so I'll never forget, but they would all have been nothing without the preceding event. This is why I find it odd.
From what I've been told, it was a still summer morning. With the sun just beginning to edge over the horizon the inevitable squawking of the local maggies was moments away. The last people from the previous night's boozing were slowly edging home between awkward stumbles and short breaks to send the recently consumed beverages and early morning munchies back up the way they'd came.
A few early birds were beginning stir among the suburban dream. But in one home there was stirring of a different kind. A woman had just woken with a shock of pain that soon managed to rouse the rest of the house.
I must have known it was time for a big change to take place. My increasingly cramped quarters had become too much to bear and one of us had to give way. Since there was no chance of me shrinking, the time came to leave my safe cocoon.
And so I took my first shy glimpse of the outside. I must have missed the little luxuries I'd taken for granted the past nine months so much, because as soon as I realised there was no going back I began to wail and screech like I'd never spoken before in my life.
As often as I've enjoyed schooling, I've pondered about my birth. If and how what went on inside has shaped me as an individual. I quite like to imagine life in the womb, something like breakfast in the bath. Perhaps that's why I have such an intense liking for taking it easy and living life at my own pace?
Since then years have passed. I learned to crawl, to walk, and soon to pronounce my first tentative little words. I've made friends and foes, experienced some good