Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.

indd 3

26/08/16 3:30 PM

The One About

THE BIG BABY

I was born in South Africa in 1976. I think for most South
Africans, my birth was probably overshadowed by events in
Soweto, and, even in my most egotistical moments, Ill admit
this is probably fair enough. Well talk more about Soweto
later. In the meantime, back to me!
It was raining in Johannesburg on 15 February 1976, or so
Im told. The rain is part of the legend. Another part is that I
was and remain to this day the biggest baby ever to have
been born in the Queen Victoria Hospital.Thats what the nuns
told Mom, and nuns arent allowed to lie. Lettie (my mother)
reckons she was in labour with me for more than a week. Mom
isnt a nun, so she has been known to lie, or at least gild the lily
a bit. But its safe to believe her when she says it was an epic
labour and that at some point the nuns feared she would lose

14

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 14

26/08/16 3:30 PM

This is me at four weeks old. Just look at that pout!

The One About the Big Baby

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 15

15

26/08/16 3:30 PM

her life, or I would lose mine, or both. I cant remember much

about it, but to this day Im not fond of confined spaces, so it
must have left an impression on me, too.
The hospital closed down soon after I was born, but
that was probably just a coincidence. I dont think the nuns
thought, Fuck, we cant have another monster like that again,
ever. Its clearly a sign from God. Lets close up shop.
Delivering an 11-pound (5.5-kilogram) baby naturally will
always be stressful, but actually Mom dodged a bullet. I was
a month premature. According to my mother, I was so big
the doctors said that if she had gone to full term with me I
wouldve looked like a baby giraffe walking around on little
hippo legs. I used to love that story when I was little.
As it was, I had to go into the neonatal ward with all the
other premature babies. Most premature babies dont weigh 11
pounds. In fact, if you scooped up all the other premature babies
from the incubators in the neonatal ward and weighed them,
they probably wouldnt have made 11 pounds put together. I
didnt fit in an incubator, so they had me in an oxygen tent.
I basically looked like a five-year-old camping in there amongst
all the little plastic boxes containing tiny human beings.

"
I am the youngest of three, with an older brother, Quintin,
and an older sister, Reinette. I once asked my mother if she
knew I was going to be the youngest child. Her response was,
No, but I hoped so. That always stuck with me.
I brought it up with my brother once when I was about
11. He looked me right in the eye and replied, Ill tell you
what happened. First Mom had me and she looked at me
and she thought, What an adorable baby. Lets have another

16

Rolling with the Punchlines

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 16

26/08/16 3:30 PM

one. Then she had our sister and looked at her and said,
Oh my god! What a beautiful, beautiful baby! Lets have
another one! Then she had you [me], looked at you and said
Ewwww! We are DONE!
My brother is really quite a sensitive soul and probably
didnt mean to scar me for life. And he didnt. The saving
grace of my family is that we can all take a joke. And the other
saving grace is that we can all give as good as we get.
I smiled at him.
Youre an asshole, I said sweetly.

THE SAVING GRACE OF MY FAMILY IS

THAT WE CAN ALL TAKE A JOKE. AND THE

OTHER SAVING GRACE IS THAT WE CAN
ALL GIVE AS GOOD AS WE GET.

Even at the tender age of 11, I knew a bit about how babies
are made, and that it is basically the same thing as making
pancakes (although even at the tender age of 11 I had an
inkling that the ingredients were a bit different).
What happened, I told Quintin and Reinette, was the
same thing that happens when you make pancakes. The first
two are usually flops. There are so many things that can go
wrong, and do go wrong, when you make pancakes or babies
that you look at the first couple and youre happy you made
them, but they just arent right. Its only the third pancake
thats the perfect pancake. Basically what Im saying is I am
the perfect pancake. I am the perfect child. Mom knew that
she didnt need to tweak the recipe, because shes got the
perfect one. Also, just like with pancakes, you dont throw the

The One About the Big Baby

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 17

17

26/08/16 3:30 PM

first few munters out. You keep them, you eat them. You just
dont cherish them like the perfect one.
Fair enough, laughed Quintin.

"
The perceptive amongst you will have noticed we talked about
Mom making pancakes and babies as though she was doing
it all on her own. Well, she basically was. Mom was actually
living in Natal while she was pregnant with me, but as she
was approaching the big day (and obviously I use the term
big advisedly) she and Dad went with Reinette and Quintin
to visit my grandmother in Johannesburg. Dad sauntered off
one day to get some bread and milk and didnt come back till
I was six months old. The first time I met him, my mother
put six-month-old me on his chest and I apparently gave
him one look, wound my little fingers into his luxuriant chest
hair and ripped out a good couple of handfuls. That didnt
help the already much-impaired bonding process. In fact, we
never got on. He often said Im not his and Ive often hoped
I wasnt.

"
Once Dad came back in body at least, if not in spirit
we returned to our home in Hlobane, a little town in Natal
where my father worked as a miner and my mother as a
bookkeeper at the train station. It should have been quite an
idyllic childhood: we got to drive locomotives up and down
the railway yards and stuff like that, thanks to Mom, and what
kid wouldnt kill to get some of that action? All the good bits
were thanks to Mom. All the bad bits were down to Dad, his

18

Rolling with the Punchlines

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 18

26/08/16 3:30 PM

The three of us having an ice block. Note theres not one smile.
Im the one keeping a very close eye on mine.

The One About the Big Baby

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 19

19

26/08/16 3:30 PM

alcoholism and his abuse. In the end, it all got too much, and
when I was eight, my parents got divorced.
At least, thats the quick and easy way to describe what
happened. What really happened is that one night we climbed
into our neighbours car and lay flat on the floor as he drove
us out of town to safety, with Dad all the while rampaging
around with a handgun, looking for us. Our neighbour drove
us to the home of friends of his in a nearby town, Vryheid.
They hid us for the night. While I didnt have a clear idea of
what was going on, I do remember that in their house I felt
completely safe for the first time in my life. Ive never met
them or heard of them since, but along with the neighbour
who bravely drove us away that night, I have no doubt they
saved our lives. If it hadnt been for them, neither I, my
siblings nor my mother would be here today.

"
In the morning, my uncle collected us and drove us to
Germiston on the East Rand of Johannesburg. It was only
four and a half hours, but it felt like a full day in the car. At
the end of the journey, I was back in the house where I had
spent the first six months of my life. Funny, but it didnt ring
any bells at all.
Ouma Lettie, my grandmother (my mom was named after
her), lived there with Oom Boet, my uncle. It wasnt a huge
house, and all four of us my mom, both my siblings and
I lived in one bedroom. My grandmother was wheelchairbound because of a stroke, but she didnt take an ounce of
shit, ever. Shed sit in her chair in the doorway of her room
with a strategic view of the other rooms and the lounge. If
you said something to annoy her, shed reach behind her to

20

Rolling with the Punchlines

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 20

26/08/16 3:30 PM

where her slipper bag was hanging behind the door. She wore
slippers all the time the type with the hard plastic soles
but she also kept a few spares to use as ammunition whenever
we stepped out of line. That woman had an amazing arm.
Whenever she reached behind that door, we started running,
but shed always get you in the back or on the back of the head.
There was no escape. My grandmother was very religious, so
it was quite easy to offend her. Even saying you were bored
was enough. After the slipper strike, shed put you to work,
and would work you to bits, presumably to save you from
what happens to those with idle hands.
When youre eight years old, the world is full of temptations,
and thats probably why I sustained so many head injuries
from flying slippers as a child. One of the biggest temptations
was right across the road from the house. None of us kids had
ever seen a mine dump before, but it was love at first sight.
It was about the size of a mountain, but it was made of what
felt like beach sand. You could climb it if you got a good runup, and coming down in giant strides often falling flat on
your face and tumbling over and over in the fine dirt was
a total blast.

WHEN YOURE EIGHT YEARS OLD,

THE WORLD IS FULL OF TEMPTATIONS

My mom and my grandmother used to lecture us at length

on the dangers of the mine dump, and we took these warnings
to heart. I clearly remember one day Quintin and I discussed
the dangers, and decided we needed to protect ourselves. So
we went into my uncles sock drawer. There was a .38-calibre
pistol in one sock, a little .22 in another and a sock full of

The One About the Big Baby

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 21

21

26/08/16 3:30 PM

ammunition, so we loaded the guns, stuffed them in our pants

and headed up the dump. What could possibly go wrong?
Once high up and out of everyones view, we lined up some
soft-drink cans and bottles and started blazing away at them.
The .38 was a bit of a shock: neither of us expected it to kick
back so hard or to make our ears ring in quite the way it did.
My brother stood behind me, bracing me with his body and
covering my ears as I took my turn shooting at the cans.
One of the things they teach you about safety with firearms
apart from the need to keep them in a secure place, such
as a sock drawer was that you shouldnt fire at a target on
the skyline. The bullet can keep going for quite a long way,
you see, and endanger anything that happens to be on the
other side. It so happened that there was an off-duty police
officer on his bicycle on the other side while I was firing at
the cans. He and a mate were minding their own business
when a softnose .38 slug slammed into the frame of his bike
close to the pedals. He must have been quite brave, because
he immediately set off up the mine dump to find the person
who had just shot his bike. He found two very surprised and
relatively heavily armed little kids, and started yelling at us.
We heard the bit about him being an off-duty cop, but
we didnt wait around to find out if it was true or if he had a
badge. We legged it. We werent pushing bikes and, because
we had been up the dump so much, we knew where to run to
avoid the sink holes and sand traps. We got down in no time
and well ahead of him and his mate, and we hid on top of the
roof of my uncles shed till my mother got home. Then we
snuck the guns back into the sock drawer. For years, people
were talking about the kids who shot an off-duty officers
bicycle frame and how it nearly killed him. I never corrected
them and told them it probably would have just gone through

22

Rolling with the Punchlines

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 22

26/08/16 3:30 PM

The three of us at our grandparents house.

No smiles. Just three scared kids.

The One About the Big Baby

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 23

23

26/08/16 3:30 PM

his calf, but, you know, it scared the bejesus out of me. I
realised that all it could take was a stupid decision and the
shit that you can fit into a sock to fuck up your entire life.
Nobody got hurt, but, in my grandmothers words, it was
only by the grace of God! that I didnt touch a gun again for
years, and when I did I was an adult, it was my brothers gun
and he had a licence and sock drawer of his own. Actually, I
think he had a gun safe. I do remember we used paper targets
set up against a solid wall, and he didnt need to brace me
against the recoil any more, as by then I had what you might
call a well-developed centre of gravity.

"
We were living in a pretty small community, and a religious
one at that, so there was naturally quite a lot of curiosity
everyone was nosey as fuck, actually about why my parents
had got divorced. The other kids used to tease me about it,
because none of their parents were divorced. Even my teachers
would ask me why my parents got a divorce. I was eight years
old I had no idea what to say to them. I told Mom that the
teachers wanted to know and she told me exactly what to say.
So the next time I was asked, I said: Miss, its my dads fault.
My mom reallllllyyy, realllllly wanted to be a widow but my
dad wouldnt drink the poison.
To my surprise, the teacher laughed her head off. Mom
had written my first ever joke, and I had delivered it with
feeling, even if I had no real idea why it was funny. Despite
my faint confusion, I knew I had nailed it. I couldnt wait for
someone else to ask me why my parents had got divorced.

24

Rolling with the Punchlines

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 24

26/08/16 3:30 PM

Ouma Lettie (pre-stroke) standing out in front of the house we fled to.

The One About the Big Baby

Punchlines_TXT_FINAL.indd 25

25

26/08/16 3:30 PM