... I was never just like everyone else

When I was a kid, my Dad used to take us to a guest farm every year. My sister, the social butterfly, would stay around the farm and play with the other kids while I would pack a thicker shirt and go exploring. I'd take walks that would last for hours, walks down the sandy path past the tuck shop and past the gate, down the side path and all the way to the waterfall.

I'd be gone for hours on end.

I'd wake up early in the mornings, when it was still foggy outside, and would make my way to the milking sheds. I'd try again and again to milk the cows properly without hurting them and sometimes I succeeded. The farm hand would sometimes pull on a teat and squirt it at me. The milk was sweet and warm, and later all the guests would sit at the tables to devour breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast, or Corn Flakes and fresh milk.

Often I would walk through the horse pen, petting them. Once I was bitten by two horse flies - in the same spot on my gangly body.

I remember once taking a stroll to the pig pen to take photos, but I had a new cheap camera I didn't know how to use. So I snapped away and took photos the whole day, and when we had all piled back into the car and headed back to the coast, I had my photos developed. The photos I had taken at the pig pen looked unusual. Each them featured a big pinky orange ear with a tree in the background. I remember being angry but I thought to myself, "Next time, turn the camera around!"

Does this post have a moral to the story though? Yes, I'd like to think it does. There are times when I like to be a recluse and disappear from the world - and just for a short while live in my own world. A perfect world where things were good. Where I didn't have to impress people and I don't always have to wear a smile and sometimes, just sometimes, I felt a sense of confidence. It was MY world, and I was the king.