I must have been about seven or eight, and my little brother maybe four, when Uncle Ken came to stay with us for a couple of weeks, all the way from Australia. He wasn't a real uncle, just a friend of my dad's, but we'd never met anyone from Australia before. Naturally we wanted to know what his life was like.
He told us in all seriousness that he was an alternative kangaroo tamer. He would calm the spirits of rowdy kangaroos by playing them Rolf Harris records to hypnotise them. The kangaroos would bounce up and down in time to the beat until they fell into a sleepy trance.
I must have been twelve when it clicked that bouncing up and down did not lead to a hypnotic trance. Naturally it took another couple of years for me to be sure he'd been having us on.
A childhood belief about work
others believed things like this
- I used to think that adult kangaroos were called Kangas and that child kangaroos were called Roos. Anon
- I used to think Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima were a married couple. — l stu electtirc boogaloo
- I used to believe that God looked like/was Rolf Harris— Dave
- I used to believe that Rolf Harris and Timmy Mallet were one and the same... I have absolutely no idea why...— Danny Leonard
- i thought kangaroos were giant rabbitsAnon
- when I was little my uncle told me he was part bear. I believed people could be part bear until I was twelve. — Audrey