A particularly scarring moment of my life happened in the first year of Canberra living. Well actually there were two that year, but one thing at a time. A good description of snorks at this time is the young Mexican (read:Victorian). A small boy of 8, relocating for the sixth time. The only real constants in my life had been family and football (I was prone to football fever, even by that stage).

Moving on... this was also the first time that I had paid any attention to the opposite gender. I was madly in juvenile love. With Jennifer. Well, when I realised this I thought I would share it with my family. All of them. At once. At the dinner table in fact. My parents led the charge, and the ensuing ridicule guaranteed that I would never share intimate thoughts/ feelings/ opinions with them again. It was from this time, your honour, that my friends were elevated to the roles of closest confidants. From then onwards, I trusted and depended on them in matters dear to me. Really quite a formative moment.

As it happened, the friends that assumed these positions were typically male. Throughout school, I grew up in an environment that had a clear male majority. During uni I made some female acquaintences that nearly made the cut, but not quite. I trust my mates, it just happens that they are all male. Well, were....