STELLA SAYS, CONFESSION TIME! WHEN DID YOU FIRST KNOW YOU WERE AN EVIL CHILD?

I can hear all of you now: "Evil. Moi. Surely you jest. I have always been a sweet, generous, rule-following little saint."

Well, I haven't.

The first time I got an inkling of the depths of my depravity? One day when I was 5 I hung around the kindergarten classroom when everyone went out to recess and hid a bagged lunch--not my bagged lunch. That other little girl, "the owner," was such a priss and she always had a lemon flake biscuit (former Brit here), and Branston pickle on her cheese sandwich, and fancy little pieces of vegetable cut sooooo neatly by her doting Mummy who put them in a twee plastic bag with a thin ribbon tied in a bow at the top. I ask you--ribbon?

And she bragged.

And she waggled her head in the way the "aren't I wonderful kids" did. And when she finished eating all that food, she pulled out a paper-wrapped sweetie, unwrapped the crackly covering and popped the luscious morsel into her mouth--while I watched. She wouldn't have had half the fun if I hadn't sat there drooling.

Bread, butter and jam. Bread, butter and jam. And an apple. That's what I got every day. It never failed and never varied and when your front teeth are loose, apples are scary. And I had bread, butter and jam for tea, too--big whoopee.

But little miss perfect didn't have a thing on me when it came to looking like an innocent angel. My spun silk hair was white a very slightly wavy, my eyes big and blue, and MY mummy always tied a big bow around my head. I had a soft mouth and it trembled nicely on command so when miss perfect pointed her stubby little finger at me and said, "She took it," I just wobbled my bottom lip, filled my eyes with tears and hid my face in my hands.

"Here it is, Miss Harris." This was little-boy-helpful who was already a mini-man, taking charge. He searched all the desks and what should he find but a lunch, a bit smashed, in a spare desk.

Poor Stella, blamed like that. How could anyone so sweet be accused of such a dastardly deed.

Then there was my sixth year when I didn't know school had finished a day earlier than my mother realized. Off I went, looking forward to the day because I liked school, but there was no-one in any of the classrooms. In the playground the janitor said, "They be all over in t'Church. Best 'urry."

I hurried and arrived inside St. Paul's just as an absolutely full church of children and adults were forming up to leave. Figuring they were going back to the school, I joined the nearest group.

By the time we arrived at the railway station I had worked out (I wasn't such a dumb kid) that this mass of children were mostly unknown to me, that they were getting on a train (in fact I was very quick) and that I shouldn't be with them.

But they were going to Salisbury, to an OUTING, where there would be games, food, prizes, running around like mad and so much fun.

I was a little bit scared when I got on the train, but I just fitted in so off I went.

Some hours later, while I was enjoying a sack race, I saw a policeman walking toward me with a big smile on his face. That smile didn't suck me in, and neither did the strawberry ice-cream cone he held out to me (some people keep on being sneaky)because I knew that at not quite six years old, I was being arrested for the first time.

That day my mother went into labor with my brother but wouldn't go to the hospital until I was found. Things were so sticky by the time I got home that Mummy had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance--which turned out to be a good thing because she wasn't up to doing what she would have (rightly) done to me.

And now to the reason for this late confession. I believe I did some outlandish things as a child because my mind wasn't ever kept fully occupied. And since I was imaginative, creative, and looking for ways to get some attention, even if it brought doom in the end, I concocted "noisy" diversions. I also think that eventually the schemes I rehearsed in my head became first my drawings and paintings, then my stories.

I must always have been a writer struggling to get out! That's my story and you can't make me change it.

What do you remember as your first "criminal" act--if you every committed one, of course? And did your childhood behavior (good and bad) signal what you have become?

Yours cheerfully,

Stella