Dad's Whisky, Truant, and Hide & Seek

   

DAD’S WHISKY & MY HIDE & SEEK

I imagine my childhood was very similar to that of most Gibraltarian children at the time so I will just tell you about two or three incidents of it.

At the tender age of about 7 years old. I remember l would see Dad having drink of….  something…..  each day before lunch. In those days, shops had a working day from 9 a.m. till 1 p.m. Then a 2-hour break for lunch, from 1 till 3 and then the shops would re-open from 3 till 8 p.m. This was wonderful because families could sit together for a leisurely FAMILY lunch.
No TV at the time, no radio, obviously no computers or mobile phones.
Families would sit together and talk about their day, their worries, their aspirations, children would tell of their day in school, jokes, family news …. everything that creates a solid cohesion within and to the family itself.

Back to Dad and the drink.

I remember pestering him “Daddy, what's that?”

“Nothing David, just medicine.”

And the next day it was again “Daddy, what's that?”

And the reply was the same…. but the next time I ventured a step further and said: “Daddy, I want some”

“No David, this is medicine for grown-ups you can't have it”

I must have been a bit of a ball-breaker, because I kept insisting day after day after day that I wanted to have that medicine.

The medicine of course was ….. distilled in Scotland and in fact the label of it was the Pope's telephone number (VAT 69)???

Dad, pissed off with me, decided one day, when Mum was still in the kitchen, and not looking, to pour half a glass of whiskey neat and told  me:

“¿Toma, no quieres medicina?  Ahi tiene medicina !”

I grabbed the glass and swallowed it in one go!

I was sick as a hog  ! ! ! !

I vomited ….
 I soiled myself…..
 I cried….
The fire in my throat couldn't be put out with anything….
I hated my Dad…
I hated the “medicine” and to this day even the smell of whiskey makes me nauseous!
To this day I do not drink whiskey, not that I drink much else either.
Dad laughed…
But  after seeing to me till l had vomited “hasta las primeras papillas” and recovered, it was then Mum gave Dad a piece of her mind. In quiet and measured tone, she must have scored bulls eye after bull’s eye!
I think her words even brought grey hairs to his head!!

Did I hate Dad for it?
Not at all!
I understood I had been so “pesao” till I had exasperated even his legendary patience with me, his little boy!

That was one incident

Let me tell you about another incident because I really must have been a very bad boy.
I think I was 8 years old.
One morning, we had a live-in maid of the time, the maid came to make sure I had washed and to help me get dressed for school.
Don’t ask me why, but  I told her point-blank:
“I am not going to school today!” This is about 8 in the morning.

To this day I don't know why I said that. Perhaps just to see what the reaction would be, just pushing at the boundaries. I sat on the bed half dressed with the pyjamas, wrapped my arms around myself and crossed my legs and refused to take off my pyjama bottoms or get dressed.
The maid, her name was Josefa and she actually comes up much later in this story-telling, she didn't know what to do.

Mum was getting ready and preparing breakfast. Dad was smoking his first cigarette of the day while still in bed (he was a 60-a-day smoker …Albany brand as l recall) and a late sleeper and he loved those last 5 minutes in bed.

Mum scolded me. But I would not move. Josefa scolded me ;I did not move. There was a lot of shouting:

“David you have to get dressed now!”

“I don't want to go to school!” ….. that type of thing.

My father got out of bed. I still remember this, it's like a memory that will never go away! I remember he slipped off a wide, pigskin belt that he had on his trousers, folded on the hanger. He came up to me, said not a word and whipped my legs once with the belts.
This was the only time Dad ever laid a hand ….or a belt… on me …. EVER!

I don't know what was worse, the pain of the whipping, or the anger in my father's face.

But I can guarantee that it took me no more than 15 minutes to wash, get dressed, have breakfast and be first in the line in school for lessons!

In today's world Dad would probably be in jail for cruelty, Mum would probably have been reported for shouting at me, Josefa would have been deported and I would still be sitting on the bed refusing to go to school.
Boy has the world changed!

Here's another memory I have from those childhood days.
I must have had a warped sense of humour. I hope it has not accompanied me throughout all these years, though maybe …..
I'm not sure whether it was mid-morning, but not a school day.
I decided I'd go and hide, play hide and seek with my parents….. except I did not tell them.

So, grabbing a few biscuits and some water I slipped under the bed of our Josefa who lived at other end of the corridor, and stayed quiet as a mouse. After a short while I started hearing my mother called me “David …. David….”

Then it was my mother and Tita calling out for me.
At this point I have to tell you that Tita (actually Rachel Levy de Balensi) was my mother's maiden aunt who lived with us and she was to all intents and purposes, my grandmother, and what a lovely lady she was.

Then it was Mum and Tita and Josefa: “David ...David ...David...”
And I was laughing my head off still hiding under the bed. I thought it was a great joke!
They looked for me everywhere and I wouldn't come out from under the bed. They looked everywhere but nobody thought of looking under Josefa’s bed.
The next thing I remember is hearing Dad rushing in from the shop to see what was happening, then he too, in a much more authoritarian voice shouting “David! David!”

And then, some two hours layer, David laughingly came out from under the bed and said
 “Here I am!” with a big grin on my silly face.
Mum’s slap was faster than Wyatt Earp’s draw!
Obviously followed by kisses, tears, scolding, a scowl from Dad that made me shake in my shoes ….. whatever happened to their sense of humour?
I deserved it all.

I never did that again.

But there is the sting at the end of the tail/tale.

Many, many, years later my own daughter, Kellie, did that to us. She was 3 years old and she decided to go walkies by herself. The panic my late ex-wife Rachel and I felt when we looked for her all over the house and she wasn't there….
When we went up to the terrace and she wasn't there….
When we rushed down to the street and she was nowhere to be seen in busy Main Street…
We phoned the Police …
We found the hospital …
She was not there… relief … and fear again!
We could not find her.

We lived at 222 Main Street at the time, opposite present Marks and Spencer above the Silver Shop. Opposite was Barclays Bank and Kellie had apparently gone to Barclays in her pink dress and with a little toy shopping basket, also pink. She was smiling at everybody and everybody thought:  
‘Well, she must be waiting for her Mum who is probably at one pf the counters’
From their Kellie decided to go walking down Main Street, then up City Mill Lane. She stopped at a toy shop (owned by the Ramirez family) and saw a lovely little pink pram. She picked up the pram and went out with it, down to Cornwall’s Lane where she sat in a toy car (yes, also pink!) that was there smiling at the owner of Sanguinetti’s Toy Shop.
Just then, Mrs Ramirez rushed in and started telling Kellie off for taking the pram. Ernest Sanguinetti asked what was wrong and Mrs Ramirez, thinking Kellie was his daughter, turned on him:
“Con todos los juguetes que tienes tu, and your daughter comes to my shop to take a pram!”
Ernesto had to laugh. He knew Kellie was our daughter and so explained it to Mrs Ramirez and returned the little pink pram to her. They both looked around for Rachel or me … not finding us, he took Kellie in his arms and came to TEO (our family shop in Main Street). All this while Rachel and I were frantically searching all down Bomb House Lane (the Hebrew School is there….maybe Kellie went to see if she could find Asher, our son, 2 years older.

Gibraltar being the safe place it was then, our daughter was returned to us, safe and sound, by our friends, and it was our then manager of the shop, Derek Apap, who picked up Kellie in his arms and brought her to us. We were still running up and down Main Street and the first thing my daughter said to me laughingly, was:
“Daddy, I ran away!”
 I hugged her and slapped her and kissed her in relief while Rachel cried from the happiness of having her back.
And then I thought of my Mum and Dad. I remembered the slap Mum had given me for having done what our daughter did to us.
I must say Karma may be a Bitch that is totally just.