I remember being at my Grandparent’s house in Te Awamutu. I was about four and while everybody else was saying goodbye to my Uncle before he drove back to Auckland, I was ferreting around in his car. To me it was like having a celebrity parked in the drive as the car had a digital speedometer. I had only ever seen one of these futuristic displays on Knight Rider so in my mind it was only a matter of time before I found the switch that would make the car talk.
Under the passenger seat I found an A4 envelope and so I pulled it out and asked my Uncle why it was under the seat. He told me it was under there because he needed to get the photos in the envelope ‘blown up’. Now I knew he meant enlarged but I thought the act of placing them under the seat was the key to making the photos bigger. I felt that he had let a vital piece of information slip and I now had a piece of knowledge that The Adults had been keeping from me.
Over the next couple of weeks I hid chocolate bars, toy cars and even a caterpillar under my parent’s front left seat in the vain attempt to get them ‘blown up’. I imagined riding to school on a giant caterpillar that would one day undergo a Mothra-like metamorphoses into a mega-butterfly. Strangely enough all that ended up happening is that the dog ate the chocolate bars, my cars got lost and my trusty insect steed turned into a green gooey splotch.
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