When I was in year nine, every weekend I told my parents, “I’m staying at <insert friend’s name>’s house tonight.” Then I got drunk in a park and passed out on somebody’s couch or in the backseat of a nearby car.

One week I made the error of including a movie in my lie. “Bye, Mum,” I said, walking out the door, “I’m going to see Panic Room with my bible study group.”

Then I went to a school friend’s boyfriend’s share house, smoked bongs with a bunch of uni students, and built a tower out of empty UDL cans.

When I got home, my parents asked me if I’d enjoyed the movie.

“It was okay,” I said, not wanting to rave about it too much in case they decided to see it. And then, on a roll, I proceeded to fabricate an entire synopsis of the film. My rationale behind this was that if I told my parents everything that happened in the movie, they wouldn’t bother going to see it. I hadn’t even seen the preview prior to this, so my account of the movie was inspired by the title alone and was about as accurate as a James Frey novel. I gave extensive descriptions of the characters and made sure to detail all the plot developments, and then I re-enacted several scenes, using a set of Babushka dolls my aunt had given us for Christmas.

“I heard there’s a big twist at the end,” my mother said, “What’s the twist?”

“Jodie Foster is a robot,” I answered confidently.

“Well, that sounds like quite a film,” my dad said when I had finished. “And if you didn’t smell like a grow house, I would probably believe you.”

“Am I grounded?” I asked, leaning against a book shelf to steady myself.

“No, that was entertaining enough to redeem you this time,” Dad said, “But if you come home this stoned ever again, I will enrol you in aqua aerobics classes with your mother.”

When I was in primary school, we were visited once a year by the Life Education Australia van. This was a caravan manned by chirpy women who used a giraffe puppet (Healthy Harold) and a nude mannequin (Tammy) to educate third graders on drugs and general health. I didn’t care much for Harold, but I was fascinated by Tammy and her womanly figure, which I would never develop. Her plastic skin had been shaven away on one side, exposing her plastic internal organs. I wanted to reach out and stroke her plastic liver, then tweak her plastic nipple. I was shy though.

Healthy Harold taught us about the food pyramid and advised us to exercise regularly. He then launched into an anti-drug tirade and touched on the dangers of peer pressure as well as the legal and socio-economic factors involved with drug abuse and their long-term effects on society. I spent these lessons staring at the caravan ceiling, which was covered in tiny fake stars, and thinking about my silk worms, but the message was so strong, it seeped completely into my eight year old brain anyway. If anyone had offered me a cigarette, I would have urinated on their entire packet and rang the police immediately. If thirty of my classmates had stood in a circle and chanted “CHUG, CHUG, CHUG,” I would have tipped my bottle of beer down the nearest drain and raised my face to the sky, arms outstretched, before calling out the twelve steps and giving glory to God. I was completely staunch in my resolve: I would never drink or smoke. I would certainly never take drugs. I would be healthy. I would be happy. I would be like Harold.

Four years later, my great-grandmother died. She was ninety-seven years old, and had been in a nursing home for six months. I remembered the day she was put into the nursing home, because my father was very tense and simply told me, “She fell over.” But through eavesdropping on my mother’s phone conversations, I was able to piece together all the details: Nan had gotten out of bed during the night to get a glass of water, then she had fallen over on her way back from the kitchen, breaking her hip and smashing her head against the floor, knocking herself out. Unable to get back up after she regained consciousness, she simply remained on the floor and waited for somebody to find her. By the time my grandfather arrived in the morning to take her to church, she had ripped up half the carpet in her living room in an attempt to keep herself warm throughout the night. She had torn up her hands doing this, and managed to cut her arms on broken glass. She had also shat herself and was crying with embarrassment.

This single agonising, undignified event completely horrified me. “Why couldn’t she get back up again?” I asked my mother, interrupting her phone call.

“She’s just too old,” Mum explained, “The body starts to give up and stop working after a while.”

This distressed me deeply. The idea that I could one day find myself unable to walk or wipe my own arse was the most depressing thing I had ever contemplated. And the thought of my great-grandmother lying amongst broken glass on her kitchen floor, nursing a smashed hip and a bruised face, scratching at the carpet and defecating on her own muumuu was too awful for my pre-pubescent brain to handle. In that moment, I vowed that I would die the day after my 70th birthday. Or even sooner, if possible. I would never be found covered in my own shit and lying broken on the floor, because I simply wouldn’t live that long. I would die while I still had dignity and presence of mind. Hopefully I would still have my figure too.

And so, when my time came, I said “Yes!” to cigarettes. I said yes to alcohol and pot and pills and anything else that crossed my path. I still work out and eat properly and moisturise and sleep 8 hours every night, because I am vain, but I’m not going to make any effort to extend my life beyond the ability to control my own bladder. If being healthy means dying in a puddle of my own excrement with broken hips, then Harold can eat my arse.

Editor’s note: Any teachers or parents who are interested in having Annik speak at their children’s schools can send an expression of interest via email to education [at] annikskelton.com

Most of my relatives live interstate or in France and the Sydney ones don’t like us, so my family usually spends Christmas day getting drunk in our living room and letting out all the pent-up rage that has accumulated over the year.

“Why should you get to park in the driveway while my car sits out on the street like a whore?” I snap at my brother, tearing open a carefully wrapped gift from my mother. “Oh look, more Bryce Fucking Courtenay. You know he hasn’t written anything good since Four Fires. Buy me some Tim Winton or something. Goddamn it.”

“I’m the oldest,” my brother says, slurring slightly, “I get to park where ever the hell I want.”

“You’re the ugliest,” I retort. “Besides, you sell cleaning products, you’re going nowhere in life. At least I went to uni. I tried to make something of myself.”

“Yeah, tried being the operative word. Unlucky for you, there isn’t much demand for ice-queen bitch accountants with half a degree under their belt and a drinking problem. Face it, Neek, you’re a fucking failure. You have no career prospects, and no man will ever marry you because you have terrible genes. No offence, Mum.”

“You cunt, I’ll kill you,” I say, smacking his beer off the coffee table and reaching for his eyes, which were recently operated on and cost him $9,000 in medical bills.

At this point, my father rises from his cane chair and sighs. He walks over to his new electric piano and plugs in his headphones. Then he sits and plays Gershwin for three hours, until we have all passed out or gone to our bedrooms. The piano is my father’s happy place. He is an amazing musician, and people often go to my parents’ church just to hear my dad play. But at home, he plays to himself through headphones while the rest of us sit on the couch and watch television. Eventually, my mother falls asleep on the lounge and my brother goes to the garage to work on his motorbike. I walk down the road to the park with play equipment and sit at the top of the slippery-dip. I smoke cigarettes and ash onto the slide, thinking about all the local children who will now go home to their mothers with ashy, smelly pants. I think about how much I hate my family. I think about how much I hate Christmas. I think about the arbitrary cruelty of having a designated day of the year where I am forced to spend 24 hours with my family, regardless of whether I am in a good mood or have a sufficient supply of valium to see me through the holiday.

It wasn’t always like this. We used to have guests over for Christmas. Not traditional guests (ie friends and family) but random people my mother had met throughout the year who didn’t have anything better to do on Christmas day, because they were so scummy that they had failed to achieve basic relationships in life and had nobody to hang out with on the most important holiday of the year.

First there was Warwick, a thirty-something IT professional who lurked around my parents’ church and rode his bicycle everywhere. He came over for Christmas each year, and I hated him passionately.

“I think he’s a pedophile,” I told my mother as we stood at the kitchen window, looking out at  Warwick in the backyard. He was sitting by the pool, supervising the neighbour’s children as they swam.

“Do any of you kids know what skinny dipping means?” he asked them, trailing his big toe through the water. “I like to skinny dip.”

Then there were the pregnant bikie trashbags. They only came once – the last year we had guests. My mum had invited Gail, a crusty woman she met at TAFE, and her daughters. They showed up for lunch at 4pm and were all wearing leather jackets.

“Sorry we’re so late,” Gail said, picking something out of her teeth. “Young Natalie here had to stop every five minutes to take a piss.”

“I’m pregnant,” Natalie explained.

“Cool,” I said, draining my wine glass.

“Not cool!” Gail shouted. “Do you know how many times I’ve driven her to the abortion clinic? She pussies out at the last minute every time and decides to ruin her life instead.”

“How old were you when you had Natalie?” I asked pleasantly.

“She was sixteen,” Natalie replied, “Just a year older than me now.”

“What a charming family tradition,” I smiled, pouring myself a gin and tonic. “I recently turned sixteen myself.”

“If that’s the case,” Gail interrupted, “Should you really be drinking, young lady?”

“Well I’m not pregnant,” I replied.

Just then Warwick entered the house, holding a dripping child under each arm. “Did somebody say something about babies?” he gasped.

“Yeah,” I said, “This is Natalie. She’s pregnant, but she’s still trying to work up the guts to have an abortion.”

“I beg your pardon!” Gail spluttered.

“I like babies,” Warwick said.

“Oh my god, we’re out of wine,” Mum whispered to me.

“I’ll get some more,” I offered. I caught a bus to the local shopping centre and smoked a joint on the loading dock. Then I watched The Ring three times because nothing short of the apocalypse would cause Greater Union to close their doors. By the time I got home, Mum was asleep on the lounge, Dad was playing the piano, and my brother had disappeared to the garage.

When I was in kindergarten, my parents were trying to teach me the concept of sarcasm. One day we were all in the car and my father pulled up at a set of lights.

“Oh boy, traffic!” he cried, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “I just love traffic. Traffic is my favourite thing ever!”

My mother turned around in the passenger seat so that she was facing me. “Neeky,” she said. “What is Daddy being right now?”

I hesitated, uncertain, and glanced at my brother before turning back to Mum.

“A dickhead?” I guessed.

The risk of asking someone to eat you out.

One of my favourite things to do is to walk around the house and pick out the pieces of furniture I wish to inherit when my parents die.

“I’ll take the dressers from the lounge room,” I tell my mother, “and all of the art. Except for the Aboriginal paintings, Chris can have those. Obviously I’ll be keeping the piano and all of Dad’s music as well.”

“Do you want the dining set too?” Mum says, “You might as well take it, seeing as you hacked your initials into all the chairs with scissors.”

“I don’t really care for the finish…” I confess, running my hand over the table top, “but I’m sure I can sell it. I imagine all your cash and investments will be split 60:40 between me and Chris respectively, seeing as I’ve proven myself to be the smarter and better looking child?”

“I don’t know about that,” Mum says, “Your brother was a lot easier to handle as a teenager. You were such a whiney bitch.”

“Well maybe if you weren’t such a shitty parent, I wouldn’t have needed so much therapy?” I suggest.

“Therapy?” Mum says, her voice rising, “Don’t talk to ME about therapy. I’ve been having therapy since the day you were born!”

“That’s a coincidence,” I tell her. “Now, what do you want to do about your jewellery? I should probably just take half now, you’ve outgrown most of it.”

The scene: my family is out for dinner at a cosy Italian restaurant for my brother’s 25th birthday. His new girlfriend is present. I have been forced to cancel my plans to watch Weeds under my doona in order to attend. I am bored. I have had 3 glasses of wine and I want to stir somebody’s pot. I actually like my brother’s new girlfriend, so I refrain from picking on her as I normally would. I know that I should also be nice to my brother, seeing as it is his birthday and I did not get him a present. And I leave my father alone, because he is my favourite person in the world. That leaves my mother.

Mum: So has anybody seen much of the Walkers lately?

Me: Yeah, I see Tim around the city every now and then, when he’s not hiding in his closet.

Mum: Oh, Annik...

Me: What? That kid’s more camp than a row of tents. Last week I saw two guys having sex in Hyde Park, and that was less gay than Tim Walker’s haircut.

Mum: The problem for Tim and other boys like him is that their faith is so important to them. They want to get married and have families like everyone else at church. But that conflicts with their involuntary desires to, you know…

Me: Fuck other men?

Mum: Yes.

Me: So if God intended for Man to be with Woman, and the Bible specifically states that homosexual practice is a sin, and the church frowns upon gays, then why did God create particular humans with these same-sex desires?

Mum: That’s one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith.

Me: No it’s not. It’s proof that the Bible is a load of horse shit, and every time you people can’t explain something properly, you just use some wanky cop-out excuse like “we can’t understand heavenly matters.” How can you add disclaimers to the entire human race’s ability to differentiate between possibility and impossibility like that? It’s a complete crock. You all disgust me.

Dad: Does anybody want dessert?

My mother has this tendency to try and talk to me whenever I am walking out the door, blow-drying my hair, on the toilet, asleep in bed or otherwise engaged.

Last Monday night, she waited until I was brushing my teeth before asking me if I had a good physio appointment. I gave a thumbs up.

“And did Elizabeth get my message?”

I shrugged.

“Did you have some dinner?”

I shook my head.

“Are you going to work tomorrow?”

I nodded.

“Well you’re just full of information tonight, aren’t you?”

“Woman,” I spat in the sink, “I am brushing my teeth.”

“Okay, no need to be such a cow. Did you know I gave birth to you without any anesthetic? I pushed out your selfish head without so much as a goddamn epidural. And this is the thanks I get.”

“Can we go home yet?” I whined to my mother, as she squinted at me through her camera lens.

“Smile, darling!” she encouraged as I wailed and thrashed in the arms of Scooby-Doo. I hated Wonderland, despite my constant nagging to go there. I endured each visit because I was obsessed with fairy floss and I hadn’t yet figured out that you could buy it from any standard lolly shop. Once I’d gotten my sugar fix, the theme park’s crowds made me nervous, the rides didn’t seem safe, and the life-sized cartoon characters roaming the grounds and posing for photos completely terrified me. Most kids ran to these characters, swarmed them and jostled for a hug with their new furry friend. However, I was under no illusion that these beings were my favourite cartoon-network personalities. I wasn’t fooled by the costumes or the funny voices. I knew exactly what they were: creepy adults wearing full-body suits in order to  lure children into close physical contact.

Which is why I ran from Scooby-Doo as soon as he let me drop to the ground. I ran straight into Fred Flinstone, and when he too tried to scoop me into his burly arms, thick with muscles from whittling away hours in a prison gym while serving his pedophilia sentence, I punched him in the crotch and turned to my parents.

“Can we go home now?” I asked. And we left.

My mother corners me in the kitchen and says “You’ll never believe what just happened!”

Certain that she is right as my imagination could never conjure up something as spectacularly mudane as what she’s about to share, I smile politely.

“So I was emailing Kerry, and thinking about calling her, but I thought I’d wait until after lunch. But then the phone rang and, no shit, it was Kerry! We were just chatting, then after a while, she said ‘Why did you call me?’ and I said ‘Kerry, you called me.‘ And she said ‘No, I didn’t,’ and I said, ‘Yes, you did!’ Anyway, we finally figured out that while Kerry was cooking, she got a message on her answering machine that sounded just like me, and that’s why she was asking why I had called her!”

Silence.

“Because she got a voice message on her answering machine!”

Crickets.

“Because it sounded just like me!”

By which point, I’ve usually left the room to slit my wrists.

When I was a kid, my family lived on 5 acres of bushland out north-west of Sydney. We had neighbouring properties on either side, but they were invisible to us and separated by thick scrub. One day, my uncle, who was staying with us, was alone in our house and accidentally set off the burglar alarm. Within minutes, the neighbours from each side came running down the driveway, one with a cricket bat, the other with an axe. It was awkward for my uncle, but my parents marveled at the speedy and protective response from our neighbours.

Now we live in suburbia. Recently my mother was at home during the day, watching television, when our next door neighbour’s alarm started going off because they were, in fact, being robbed. Annoyed at the noise, my mother turned up the TV and continued watching. A few hours later, one of the neighbours came over to say that their house had been burgled, and were we all ok?

“You’re a bad person,” I told Mum that night over dinner, “You’re going straight to hell when you die, and they’ll put you in the Lazy & Selfish cell block.”

“Well I didn’t know they were actually being robbed,” she replied, “Besides, they have a dog.”

“He’s a pet, not a home security system.”

“Whatever,” she said, pouring herself a glass of wine, “If anybody asks, you tell them I was out shopping.”