When I was in Standard 2 at primary school we had Bible Study classes for two hours every week. The first time, a few students went away to another room and the rest of us were ushered down to sit on the mat. A very smiley woman named Mrs Brown came and perched her ample backside on one of our tiny chairs and told us stories about Jesus. I don’t remember any of the stories, but I do remember singing a song about how “Jesus is the apple of my eye, and that’s why I’m bananas for the Lord”.

Afterwards, one of my friends told me that instead of Bible Study, all I had to do was tell my mother to write a note to the teacher and I could go to “Peaceful Relations” with her instead. That night, I made my mother write the note.
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Rainbow was a kids TV program that ran during the 70s and 80s. It featured Geoffrey, Bungle, Zippy and George and a few random others. It certainly wasn’t my favourite program, but I must’ve watched a fair bit of it over the years.

But this isn’t quite how I remember it from my childhood:

Some people out there on the interwebs seem to think this is evidence that children’s TV is and always was filthy and smutty and we kids used to be just too innocent to notice, but it’s not true. They filmed this for a BBC christmas party special - it was for internal use only. I bet they had a blast doing it, but I marvel at how they could keep straight faces through it.

Were you a kiwi kid? Do you remember this?

I used to watch RTR every week. I remember sitting on the floor watching it while Mum would be doing the ironing behind me in the lounge.

See how many hallmarks of 80s New Zealand you can spot in the video:

I loved this song when it came out and I still like it now.  Dalvanius Prime was a genius.   The Patea Maori Club actually visited my school so I saw it performed live. 

My family doesn’t do Mother’s day or Father’s day.    But for some reason I was thinking about my parents this morning.  I realize that this sounds extremely arrogant, but I can’t believe what a good job my parents did of raising my brother and sister and I :).   Us kids certainly aren’t perfect of course, but we have all turned out to be reasonably happy, healthy, well-adjusted, independent adults.

Obviously I realize that because my parents had a large influence on my thinking and personality, that I’m predisposed to think along similar lines to them.  For example, I value independence quite highly, and the fact that do is probably because I had so much, and that is probably due to the fact that my parents valued it also. 

I’d like to think I’ve acquired a little perspective though.  The older I get the more clearly I can see some things that weren’t great, and there are certainly some things I learned from them that I’ve rejected and ignored.  But those are completely dwarfed by all the things I like about myself (and my brother and sister), and which I can see were influenced by my parents.

When I look back on my childhood, one of the things that strikes me is how much freedom we had.  We roamed around the neighbourhood, rode our bikes up and down the road, went down to the shop, burrowed through the toi-toi in the empty section across the road, went swimming and surfing at the beach and climbing around the rocks.

But it wasn’t the kind of freedom had by the kids whose parents just didn’t give a damn.  Mum and Dad had to know approximately where we were and what we were doing (e.g. which beach or which shop we were going to), and we had to be home for dinner, and in bed at a certain time and so on.  We knew we were loved and cared for, and we had some clear boundaries, but we had huge freedom within those boundaries.

I’m nearly three years older than my mother was when she had me, and I have no confidence that I’d be able to bring up a kid properly.   I don’t have any special parenting abilities, and presumably nor did she before she had me.  She made it up as she went along, and just because of the person she is, we all turned out OK.    

I don’t mean to give the impression that my father didn’t have anything to do with it.  My parents seemed to make a pretty good (and consistent) parenting team, and he’s a great father.  

But I am singling out my mother for special appreciation.  Firstly because it’s Mothers day, but secondly, because of my father’s job, she was on her own half the time, and with no family nearby.    I can’t even begin to express how much respect I have for my mother to do such a great job raising us in those circumstances.   I just really hope someday I’m half the Mum she was.