Cousin Kaitlyn the Flight Attendant

Kaitlyn looked over at me. "Actually Darren, could you please not mention for now that I'm here?"

I was puzzled. "Why not?"

"Well, I'd sort of prefer to meet them in person, it's going to be a bit awkward talking to them over the phone after so long. How about you arrange a time we can all meet up tomorrow? Maybe see if Aunty Jean and Uncle Richard can come along? I'd love to see them again too."

"Sure, if you'd prefer to do that?" I asked.

"Yes," Kaitlyn affirmed.

My phone had by now gone to message bank, but I called Mum straight back. It was hard to keep my big news under wraps especially with Kaitlyn sitting right there, but I did just this, before promising to treat my parents to lunch tomorrow, and asking them if Aunty Jean and Uncle Richard could come too.

"No Mum, everything's great, just thought we should meet up for lunch, we haven't done that in ages. I do have a big surprise for you, but that's all I'm saying at this stage. No, it's a really good surprise, trust me. Mum, if I tell you what it is, it won't be a surprise, will it? So tomorrow at 11 at Melbourne Central, just near the clock? See you and Dad then, and hopefully Aunty Jean and Uncle Richard too. Bye Mum."

"It will be nice to catch up with them after so long," said Kaitlyn. She smiled. "Maybe invite Sheree and Trent along too? That's if they've forgiven me yet after what happened when I was 12 and stayed with you for that week."

"Well, that was 1991," I said. "And anyway, I thought it went well."

"I don't think Sheree and Trent would have fully recovered from their embarrassment yet," Kaitlyn said, both of us laughing and our minds going back in time 18 years, the smart and sophisticated flight attendant Kaitlyn replaced in my mind's eye by the awkward, ultra-religious 12-year-old home-schooled version with the glasses, braces and asthma, and how her naïve and innocent nature had led my sister and brother to embarrassment of such levels that they may have considered suicide.

My younger brother Trent then aged 10 was the first in line, and this took place one morning when he and his friends from school and football were riding their bikes around during the school holidays and came in for drinks. Kaitlyn, wearing a green jumper with a cartoon frog on the front and matching green sweat pants was sitting on the couch reading her bible, me reading another book not so far away.

Trent tried to herd his friends in and out of the house as fast as possible, but being boys aged 10 they noticed - and were quite interested in - the fact that there was a pretty 12-year-old girl in the house who normally wasn't there, and I could see my brother's stress levels growing by the second as his friends made their acquaintance with our cousin.

The boys of course tried to impress her by talking about things that boys liked, like Star Wars, TV shows, video games and popular music, and were in for quite a surprise when young Kaitlyn spoke about how she didn't have a TV. She didn't listen to music apart from a Christian group that played at her father's church and a cassette tape of religious songs. Kaitlyn had never played any video games and not only had she never seen Star Wars, she never would watch it because apparently 'The Force' promoted something other than belief in God and His teachings. She also questioned why she would want to partake in these things anyway, when there were far more interesting things to read about in her bible?

I probably should have intervened when the boys kept asking her other things trying to draw a naïve response and succeeding, but the sour look on my younger brother's face and him getting redder and redder by the second was just too much fun. Eventually Trent got his friends out of the house, and the unworldly Kaitlyn thinking that the boys were just being nice with all their questions, gave them a friendly wave and goodbye. Seeing Trent looking like the sky was about to press him into the ground as his mates all gave him shit as they rode away was priceless.

Things only got worse two days later, when the four of us went to see a movie at the local cinema. It was a rare outing to the cinema for Kaitlyn, and it had to be a G-rated movie strictly vetted by her parents. The last place Sheree wanted to be seen was at a G-rated movie with her home-schooled unworldly cousin and she tried to get out of it, but a combination of Mum winning the ensuing battle of wills and my sister being misanthropic led to her coming along, looking utterly miserable and constantly worrying that the cool kids from her high school of which Sheree was part of would see her and it would damage her social standing irreparably.

We saw the movie and Sheree seemed to be in the clear with regards to meeting her friends, until the end when we emerged from the movie and in the lobby ran right into Sheree's cool posse of friends both girls and boys from high school who were loaded up with popcorn, candy and drinks to go and see an M-rated action flick.

When they asked what movie we had seen, Kaitlyn immediately blurted out the name of the G-rated movie and how swell it was, and from there things went downhill for Sheree very quickly. Not having much grasp on sarcasm, Kaitlyn took the older girls' queries about her clothes - a pair of pink overalls with cartoon cats over a white long-sleeved blouse with pink polka dots, white sneakers with pink polka dots on her feet and a big pink bow in her hair tying back her pony-tail - to be compliments, and had happily volunteered that these items came from a second hand store, recommending the girls shop there too.

With a fair bit of time to kill before their film started, the teenagers decided that talking to Sheree's naïve cousin was far more entertaining than watching the trailers for upcoming movies. While Trent vanished and was later found hiding behind some signage, Sheree just stood there frozen as her hard-earned social status at school was flushed down the toilet in less than 10 minutes. Kaitlyn innocently volunteered the information that she was home-schooled, that she had a 7.30pm bedtime curfew every night after saying her evening prayers, how she loved the kids' bible club at her church and that how much she enjoyed sharing a bedroom with Sheree this week. She did then clarify that the other Saturday night she had been allowed to stay up past 8.30, which was because her parents had guests from church and they had lost track of time during bible study.

When this was all over, all the shell-shocked Sheree could do was shuffle to the tram with an even sourer look upon her face than Trent had the other day. Again, I probably should have stepped in to spare my cousin's dignity and my sister's sanity, but it was way too much fun seeing my shallow sister brought crashing back to Earth. Later that day, I went into my sister's bedroom and recounted the incident at the cinema to her. I had to duck really fast to avoid the hairbrush thrown at my head.

Kaitlyn shook her head. "I can't believe what a geek I was in those days, I was so naïve. I cringe sometimes looking back. And I seemed to exist to embarrass Sheree. Like that party dress I wore to Sheree's birthday that time, that made me look like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Little Bo Peep."

I laughed reassuringly. "Come on Kaitlyn, it wasn't your fault. It's just the way your parents brought you up. I didn't mind, we were always such good friends growing up."

"You were always so nice to me Darren," said Kaitlyn. "You always used to stand up for me. Like against my cousin Brendan, when he kept snapping my bra strap like it was a new toy for him to play with."

"That was awful, you were probably a bit self-conscious at that age anyway, and he was doing that to you all day? What a jerk." I then thought again about how Kaitlyn's family had long lost contact with our side of the family, and I wondered if they kept contact with her mother's sister and her family. "If you don't mind my asking, did you keep contact with your aunt, uncle and cousins in Geelong?"

"No, I haven't seen them since we moved to Adelaide and we lost contact years ago. I wouldn't want to either, they were awful people, especially the boys the way they used to bully and torment me. If I saw them coming down the street, I'd turn and walk the other way." My cousin looked at me. "I never thanked you for standing up for me that day, so thank you." She then put a shy smile on her face. "And thank you again for standing up for me at the football that time against those Tiger fans. I sometimes feel bad about that. Do you still have nightmares about that day?"

"Oh, at least once a week," I joked, thinking back to the incident Kaitlyn was referring to when we were both aged 12.

This was a family outing to the football, the first time Kaitlyn had seen an Australian Rules Football match in person. Her parents had been reluctant to agree to Kaitlyn coming with us but as we were going to support our team the Lions against the Tigers it just got the tick of approval from Reverend and Mrs. Miller. It wouldn't have been okay had the match been against the Demons, which apparently promoted Devil worship, or the Saints, seemingly as it was sinful to use religious terms to name sports teams.

At the ground, Kaitlyn looked really out of place wearing a blouse, skirt and shoes at least a decade out of date by the early 1990s, and even more out of place when she purchased a hot dog for her lunch, and prayed before eating it, attracting the attention and amazement of nearby Tiger and Lion fans in equal numbers.

When Kaitlyn and I went for a walk at half time, we passed a group of Tiger fans, who were not too happy about their team trailing, and were using bad language and blasphemy to express their frustration. When Kaitlyn asked them not to blaspheme, one of the fans responded, 'Shut up, you silly little bitch,' to which I had shot back, 'How about you shut up, you retarded homo?'

Silence then fell, and any chance of living past age 60 vanished for me in seconds as I saw the Tigers supporter who I had called a retarded homo. Six foot six, huge muscles, mullet hairstyle, a big bushy beard and tattoos all over him, he looked like a Yeti and he was striding towards me with a face like a thunderstorm about to explode.

One of his mates had said, "Leave it Big Ron, he's just a kid."

'Big Ron' heeded the advice of his friend, but then 'Big Ron' gave me a stern lecture about how I was a smart-ass with a big mouth that I should learn to keep shut in the future. He then demonstrated what would happen to me if he ever heard about me being too smart for my own good again, by crushing a beer can.

Kaitlyn and I made good our escape after this, but for months afterwards I was plagued with nightmares about another encounter with 'Big Ron'. Even turning the corner into another street or walking past the bushes in the nearby park on my way to school filled me with paranoia that 'Big Ron' might be hiding there waiting for me.

"Growing up you were my only friend," said Kaitlyn. "Well, my only normal friend. My other friends at church were as naïve and brainwashed as I was."

"I always liked you Kaitlyn, you've always had such a good heart," I said. "I was sad when you left Melbourne, but at least we were pen friends. Then it was like you and your parents just vanished from the face of the Earth. We never heard from you ever again."

Kaitlyn's pretty face took on looks of sadness and regret in equal measures. "Yeah, I feel so bad about that. It's complicated, you see things didn't work out too well in Adelaide for us as a family."

I was astonished. "In the early days you said everything was fine, your parents said everything was fine. You sent photographs, and you all looked happy."

Kaitlyn nodded. "Well at the start, yes things were fine. We carried on just the way we were in Melbourne, but later that year things changed and it was my fault. I ran completely off the rails."

I laughed. "Come on Kaitlyn, I couldn't imagine you running off the rails. You were such a good kid. What happened? I'm sure it's not as bad as you think."

"Tyrone happened."

"Tyrone? Who's Tyrone?"

Kaitlyn gave me a thin smile. "Darren, if you ever have a daughter and in her teens she starts dating a guy called Tyrone, be afraid, be very afraid. Apologies to any Tyrone's out there who are decent, upstanding guys."

"So how does this Tyrone character fit into the picture?"

"I met Tyrone around about Christmas 1994," said Kaitlyn. "The area where we moved to in Adelaide's north, there were some good neighborhoods and some not so good neighborhoods. We lived in a nice street, but Tyrone and his family were from a not so nice area. Anyway, one day I'd gone out to check the mail, and this bogan looking teenager with his friends and his sister comes riding by, you know black heavy metal tee-shirt, jeans and the likes. They all stop to say hi, and Tyrone starts chatting to me, - well chatting me up - and being 15 and a very naïve 15 I was taken in completely and was convinced I was in love."

"Your parents didn't approve of Tyrone, I take it?"

"No good parent would ever approve of Tyrone," said Kaitlyn. "They told me Tyrone was a terrible kid, and I was not to see him. But I didn't care, I just couldn't believe I was in love and had a boyfriend, and I'd made friends with his sister Sharon too, she was a year older than Tyrone and me. Anyway, I thought Tyrone and Sharon and their friends were the coolest people on Earth. They would tell me about all the trouble they would get into at school, like vandalism, throwing school supplies, desks and chairs around the classroom and playing pranks on teachers. God, I was so innocent and dumb, I couldn't see that they were manipulating and brainwashing me, and very quickly I was becoming like them."

"Kaitlyn, I wouldn't blame yourself," I tried to assure my cousin. "Teenagers don't have the best judgement in the world anyway, and forgive me for saying this, but your parents home-schooled you and shielded you from everything in the world up to that point. You didn't know how things operated in the real world and if you had been a bit more streetwise you might have seen through Tyrone. So your parents should take a lot of the blame for what happened."

"It was one of those situations where everybody was wrong," said Kaitlyn. "My parents were wrong in how they raised me and how they handled the situation when I started to rebel. Tyrone, his sister and their friends were wrong for leading me astray and into trouble. And I was wrong because I went along with a lot of things I knew were wrong. I knew it was wrong to go out with Tyrone, his sister and their stupid mates and play chicken with the trains, but I did it. I knew it was wrong to smoke cigarettes and grass, drink alcohol and take LSD, but I did it. I knew it was wrong to help Tyrone and Sharon go shoplifting at the mall, and to spray graffiti. And I knew it was wrong to steal money from my parents and use it to get my naval pierced, but I did it anyway."

"Kaitlyn, I can't believe you did any of that." I was astounded. "You stole money from your parents to get your naval pierced?"

"Yeah," Kaitlyn nodded. "The people at the place where I had it done shouldn't have done it, clearly I was under 18 but they didn't ask questions. I only had it a few months when it got infected and I took it out. Stupid thing really, I'm glad I didn't get anything else pierced apart from my ears."

"And all that other stuff too?"

"I did it," Kaitlyn said. "I turned in a matter of months from an innocent little home-schooled Christian girl into a full-blown delinquent. I would swear and scream at my parents and defy them. I would often sneak out of the house to see Tyrone and get up to stupid shit with my so-called friends, like ute surfing, or throwing a shopping trolley off an overpass bridge onto a freeway. One time I ended up in hospital from alcoholic poisoning. Another time I tried to sneak back into the house late at night by climbing on the roof, sliding back the tiles and coming in through the man-hole. It didn't go very well, we'd been smoking marijuana and drinking, and obviously I made a lot of noise going through the ceiling, and so who are waiting for me when I come out of the man-hole? Mum and Dad of course."

"What did your parents do when all this was happening?"

"Lecturing me, bible-bashing, grounding, extra school work, banning contact with Tyrone and the like. I think they were just as worried about the negative effect on Dad's new job, a pastor with a teenage daughter who carried on like that. After I came home one time in a police car after being caught trespassing, they did arrange for me to have counselling sessions with a psychiatrist and his social worker wife who were members of the church. What a pair of quacks. They ended up deciding that the reason I was acting up was that I didn't like Adelaide and was missing Melbourne and the family back there, and recommended that we cut off all contact from there so I could adjust to my new home in Adelaide and regain my faith in God. Truth is, I actually genuinely liked Adelaide, and while I did miss Melbourne at times, it wasn't like I was pining for it. So that's the main reason all contact was cut in 1995. Plus my parents were ashamed of me and how I was turning out, they didn't want the rest of our family to know. And I was by that stage too selfish to care, too caught up with Tyrone, Sharon and my other so-called new friends."

"I'm sorry Kaitlyn, I never would have guessed that was the reason we never heard from you anymore. I take it that counselling didn't work?"

"Far from it," said Kaitlyn. "I just kept getting worse. There was a café at the church, and my parents decided it would be a good idea for me to work there on Sunday mornings before and after services, that hard work might do me some good. I was the waitress from hell; surly, stubborn, rude, lazy and sarcastic, an absolute smart arse. They finally said 'this isn't working out' and fired me when a fat lady tried to order some cakes and doughnuts, and I told her she should be eating salads not cakes, and that if I was as fat as her then I would kill myself. Then my parents decided no more home schooling as I was stressing out Mum too much and that I was going to go to this fundamentalist Christian high school for girls from now on to get me back on the rails."

"I'm guessing it didn't go very well?"

"The Titanic and the Hindenburg were successful compared to my stint at that school. I caused nothing but trouble and would sometimes walk out during the day, Tyrone and I wagging school together. We'd spend most of the time making out, and in less than six months I'd gone from a girl who believed that all people practice abstinence before marriage to a girl with no morals, no self-respect and who didn't give a shit that there's certain things you can't legally do when you're 15-years-old."

Kaitlyn shook her head, my cousin clearly frustrated by her difficult adolescence. "At that age, I didn't seem to be capable of learning my lessons. Like when I was 16, I was in a state of panic for a week. Every time I went to the toilet or had a shower, I was thinking 'Where's my period?' and swore to myself that if I was lucky enough not to be pregnant I would change my ways and not do anything bad ever again, I would go back to church and follow God's path, be the good girl I was when I was younger, and always did what my parents told me to do. Luckily, as it turned out I was just late that month so no pregnancy, but how did I celebrate with Tyrone after my period finished? By doing the exact same things that led me into that mess in the first place."

"I still can't believe it," I said, remembering the sweet little innocent Kaitlyn from my childhood.