Having been blessed (or cursed) with a fertile imagination I soon found I could exploit their complete lack of knowledge about my past by filling it out with colourful anecdotes - lies. Most of my classmates knew each other well, many had been in kindergarten together. The first day of the next term I was put back into a class with kids my own age - a huge relief but also a major challenge. I was super motivated by the humiliation and worked like a Trojan to improve my reading. My reading level was very poor for my age and to remedy this I was put into primer one to get the basics skills under my belt.īeing a ‘big seven year’ old placed in a class alongside all these ‘little five year olds’ I felt out of place and deeply humiliated. I remember, aged seven and we shifted from Ranfurly, a small Central Otago village to the bustling metropolis of mid-sixties Hamilton. Whether my lies were told to impress gullible schoolmates or to deceive trusting parents, they sprang freely from my lips.

“We lie because we are reinforced for doing so” - Marc Wilson, Professor of Psychology, Victoria UniversityĪs a child lying seemed to come easily, naturally.

Born in the fire