Once apon a time, I was born and I was a normal weight. I stayed around my goal weight for several years beforeI got fat. With all the talk about childhood obesity nowadays, I guess I was just ahead of my time. I don't know when I started to chub up; I was too young to remember. According to my mum, it began when I was around 2 years old. I had a ride on tractor, my toddlerhood pride and joy. One day I pretended to fill my tractor up with petrol from my dad's 44 gallon drum and the drum fell on me and broke my leg. Just at that age when other kids are running around, losing all their baby fat, I was laid up in plaster not able to move. I guess I've just never lost my baby fat.

{Me, at my thinnest. I still have that teddy, by the way}

My first conscious memory of fatness happened when I was around 6 years old. My parents told me they wanted to put me on diet. I thought it was a good idea but I had one worry. I thought I'd lose the weight instantly and wouldn't have any clothes to wear. I couldn't understand how I'd get to the shop to buy new clothes when my old ones were too big. Those ideas of overnight success started early. Well, that diet didn't work. Obviously.

I remember being different to other kids. Not at home, where I ran and played with my friends. But at school, I didn't make friends so easily. I'd changed schools in Grade One and all the friendships seemed to be formed way before that. I was the one sitting on the sidelines, just waiting to be asked to hold the rope for skipping or be an end in elastics. Sometimes I'd be teased. Once we were on the bus on the way to swimming lessons and one of the boys in my grade had a pin. He wanted to stick it in me to see if I deflated. All the other kids laughed and I pretended I didn't know what was going on. When the teacher realised what was going on, she explained to the other kids that I couldn't be deflated, I was just fat. I don't know what was worse - his teasing or her explanation. She meant well, but that shit doesn't wash with Grade Ones.

I wasn't the most despised one in my class. There was Suzy, the girl who peed her pants on the story mat, leaving a spot that no one would ever sit near and Barry, the boy with the green, furry teeth. But I wasn't that much further up the social scale. Still most of the time, it didn't worry me.

It's strange really. I don't think I was that much different to the other kids my age. I ate rubbish sometimes - mixed lollies and Sunnyboys - but only as a treat. No more than my sister who was tiny at the time. No more than Michelle in flat three who could eat anything and just couldn't be fattened up, no matter what her mum tried.

Even though I was a book worm even at that age (and a precosiously young reader), I loved running around outside and spend all of summer at the pool. My sister and Michelle and I would walk down after school. Mum worked but she'd leave us money on the kitchen bench. So we'd get a locker for 0.25 cents, 20 cents of it a refundable deposit. We'd swim until the pool shut for the night, sometimes being the last ones there. Somes, if we were lucky, we'd nab the big rubber inner tube that you could use as a raft.

I wanted to swim in the Olympics when I grew up. I wanted to be Shane Gould (and if that doesn't age me, nothing will). When the pool closed for the night, we'd use our 0.20 locker depost to buy a pie to share between the two of us. Sometimes, if there was a leftover pie, the pool guy would give us a free one.

One day, my mum took me shopping and I tried on a brown dress with puff sleeves and orange flowers. I loved that dress. We didn't have much money and my mum had to layby it. I cried and cried. I wanted to take it home. When I was older and I read Anne of Green Gables, I loved the bit where she wanted a dress with puff sleeves. I could really related to that.

Later, after I got that dress, I went on a holiday, all on my own to stay with my grandparents in Tasmania. I got to fly by myself which was a huge thrill. I loved flying. If I didn't become an Olympic swimmer when I grew up, then I wanted to be a pilot and fly all the time.

My mum dressed me in my dress with the puff sleeves and plaited my hair, then pinned it on my head with daisies entwined through it. On that day, I was beautiful. I was the most beautiful girl in the world. I feel grown up and glamorous. When I got off the plane at the other end, my grandparents didn't recognise me. They were looking for someone younger. At the time, I thought that's what being grown up was like, that I would feel like that forever. I've only been able to recapture that feeling on rare occasions since. That feeling that I'm so magnificent, my feet barely touch the ground.

Another time I wanted hot pants. Everyone had hot pants. Marsha Brady had hot pants (I'm not sure if she really did or not, but I really wanted to be Marsha Brady. I had to have my hair done in low pigtails like Marsha and I practiced carrying my books like Marsha and if I couldn't be an Olympic swimmer or a pilot then I'd be Marsha when I grew up). My mum didn't want to buy me hot pants. I was too fat. But I insisted. I got my way. I had hot pants. I wore them with my knee high vinyl boots like an eight year old hooker but, according to my mum, I didn't look too bad. I might have been a chubby kid, but I've always had great legs.

Then, when I was in Grade Three, things happened. Bad things. My grandfather was killed in a tractor accident. My grandfather was the greatest man who ever lived. Whenever we visited him, after working on the farm, he'd have to drive his tractor down the lane at the side of the house. He'd stop and I'd run out and climb up on his knee and steer the tractor down to the barn. Then he'd come inside and lay on his special couch. All the other grandkids would gather around him but they'd have to sit at the end of the couch. He'd tell them that I was the only one who could sit beside him, because I was the best. No one has ever said that, or words to that affect, since. No one has ever made me feel that special. After he died, we had to move again. Back to Tasmania to the country town where I was born.