The single most terrifying experience of my life was not being told I might have cancer.

It was not being followed by a car full of five naked men while walking home from the pub very early one morning, who explained that they were “going to get me.”

It was not having a seizure in the middle of the Hordern Pavillion.

It was not discovering a redback spider sleeping on my pillow.

It was not realising that my fat pants had become my everyday pants.

It was not missing an entire episode of The OC, even though I was sitting on the couch in front of the television, because I was so high on Stilnox that I couldn’t understand the concept of TV.

No.

It was finding a cockroach floating in the toilet bowl of a friend’s house after I had used the bathroom, and drunkenly contemplating the possibility that I had either ingested, or otherwise acquired such a creature and held it inside my body for an indeterminate period of time. After I had vomited and finished having a panic attack, I returned to the kitchen, where my friend asked me whether the cockroach she had attempted to flush earlier that day was still in the toilet bowl.

It was a close one.

When I was a kid, my mum befriended a lady from church who had two daughters either side of my age. Preferring to be stronger, faster and more intelligent than my playmates, I chose to spend most of my time with the younger daughter, Kate. We would dress up her dolls and take them into the garden, then climb onto the roof while our mothers weren’t looking.

One afternoon, we were crawling through some bushes when Kate suddenly turned to me and said, “I did a poo in my pants.”

“Flush your undies down the toilet,” I advised.

“Alright,” Kate agreed and walked gingerly back into the house. I followed her and stood outside the bathroom door for a few minutes.

“Kate?” I called out, “What does it feel like? The poo in your pants.”

She paused for a few seconds, then answered, “Bees.”

It wasn’t until much later that I wondered when she ever had a pantload of bees to contend with.

When I was thirteen, my family lived in then-rural Kellyville. One morning my mother was driving me to school when a bird ran out onto the road and went under our car.

“Oh fuck,” Mum said, slowing the car and peering into the rearview mirror. “I think I hit it.”

I swiveled in my seat. Sure enough, a pigeon lay mangled on the road behind us. As I watched, it raised a bloody crushed wing and waved it in the air as if to say, heeeelp….

“Shit,” Mum groaned, “It’s still alive. I can’t just leave him there like that!”

“That bird looks like it’s in a lot of pain,” I observed. “It would be inhumane to simply drive away.”

Mum sighed. “You’re right. I have to do something.”

She reversed until we were behind the bird and squinted at it through the windscreen.

“Poor little fella,” Mum said, shaking her head, “I hate thinking of him hurting like that.”

She pushed the accelerator and we ran over it again.

“All fixed, darling!” Mum smiled, patting my knee reassuringly.

Me: What exactly does the groomer do for your dog that you can’t?: I bath her myself, but the groomer is supposed to give her a clip, clip her nails, express her anal glands, etc.

Kahlee

Me: I’m sorry, I thought you just said ‘express her anal glands’??

Kahlee: They get stuff in the glands in their butts, and if they’re not expressed every 6 months it can be painful for them.. You kind of squeeze on their butt.

Me: Surely that’s not really necessary? Do dogs in the wild walk around with sore butt-holes all day?

Kahlee: Dogs in the wild don’t eat processed biscuits.

Me: Another tragic example of how humans have ruined the world.