Ordinary wasn’t a word anyone used to describe Kimberly. No one noticed anything at first. Well that’s not true because Aunty Gladys did say she was a rowdy undisciplined child, but that didn’t count because Aunty Gladys speaks poorly of everyone, especially children. Although she did have a point, because when she said it, Kimberly was high up in the orange tree throwing perfectly good oranges over the fence at the boys next door while yelling obscenities at them. She was daring them to come closer so she could role her tongue, like only she could, and spit at them. Kimberly could slag better than any kid in the street. The boys next door acknowledged so, and kept their distance until she grew out of it.
 
Everyone laughed it off as a quirk, when Kimberly become upset and went into a rage throwing things, because she got a tea set for Christmas when what she really wanted was a popgun with a gallery of moving crows to shoot at; like one of the boys next door had. She became good friends with him for a few weeks. He let her use the crow set in return for teaching him how to spit at people properly.
 
Going to school became such a problem; firstly she wouldn’t wear the shoes and having to wear a dress was something her mother should have introduced her to slowly over time, it lead to the most aggressive confrontation. Within an hour of Kimberly being dropped off on her first day her mother was summoned to pick her up. She had kicked a teacher in the shins for daring to separate her from her brothers, put her in a class where she knew no one and keep calling her Kimberly rather then Kim. It was decided Kimberly should stay home for one term and have her mother teach her more about what was expected of a young lady, at school.
 
The psychologist said her mother being under some stress while carrying her might have caused her behaviour and recommended a range of treatments involving long periods of confinement, daily sessions of restricting her movement by sitting on her, if need be. Controlled forcing of her arms and legs back and forward in uniform patterns, with a course of drugs to temper her activeness. Kimberly’s mothers response to this ‘crap’ allowed the psychologist to shed more light on the problem then could hope to be uncovered with his tests and charts. Although he didn’t say anything specific just a general rambling which included the word genetic a few times. In the words of Aunty Gladys Kimberly went untreated and was left to run outside, wild and free like a young animal.
 
Eventually Kimberly had had enough couching to have her start school, in shoes and the dress, both were tolerated but not accepted. Changing into real clothes, shorts, tee shirt and bare feet became an immediate priority upon arriving home.
 
Fighting at school was always a problem, although with time as the boys learned not to challenge or confront her, the fighting died down and thus to, did the trips to the office followed by the ride home in the car with an irate mother.
 
Maturing into a young lady did present a number of problems, although most were with adults in the town and particularly her parents, rather then the boys she hung around with or herself. She was initially grounded, forever, when the word trickled back that she was regularly being sighted squatting and peeing every time the boys showered the surrounding ground. The parental talk about boys and their interest in young ladies didn’t go so well when she admitted to her parents that she and the boys had already had that talk. The attempt to put it into practice failed completely because the one who was showing her all about it, insisted on wanting to wrestle on top of her resulting in him being kicked off very quickly, and her learning how effective kicking boys in the dangling bits was to win fights with them; she said they cry like girls. Her insistence that the boys are not game to try to touch her didn’t convince her parents at all, they changed the topic to trying to have her learn something about modesty, but it fell on deaf ears.
 
Playing sport also presented a problem for Kimberly as many of the other parents lobbied to have her banned from playing contact sports with the boys, eventually the complaints added up to the point where she was told she couldn’t play any more and was invited to go join a cheers quad, or something more ladylike.
 
With her parents being driven further and further toward the end of their tether, and Kimberly exhibiting the frustration of a duck nailed to a board, her father decided to take her to work in the garage for the holidays. At first she was rather ho-hum about the whole business, until she realised that being told to sweep and fetch wasn’t a sexist thing reserved for the girl. They were the tasks required of the junior while she listened and learned. Eventually the smell of petrol reached her nostrils and started to run up and down her senses. It wasn’t long before her head started to fill with little sketches of reciprocating pistons.
 
It didn’t take long for Kimberly to become obsessive about cars and start to badger her father about sport, sure enough she was soon racing a kart and again she was able to whip the guys pretty well. Eventually she developed the skill to do all the mechanical work on the kart herself, after school, which made her the apple of her father’s eye. Aunty Gladys expressed loud and long how she would never get married with grease under her fingernails.
 
As Kimberly progressed through school she started to take an interest in marketing and eventually shocked everyone who knew her by starting to turn girlie. She had her mother teach her how to apply make-up. She struggled to learn to walk in high-heels, quite a task and started growing her hair before having it permed with a wave to complement the red die. Mother was over the moon to see her daughter finally becoming ladylike.
 
Then the shock; she took her father off to the city with a business plan under her arm and walked out with the sponsorship money to build a fifty-seven Chevy Doorslammer. Explaining to her father how they were going drag racing together. Her father was stoked, the work for the garage would be welcome, and deep down he had always had a desire to face the Christmas tree lights in battle.
 
No sooner had they got home than Kimberly kicked off the heels and changed to her shorts and tee shirt; there was lots to do, father and her had a big block ‘baby’ to build.