The Year I Turned Thirteen and Broadened my Mind

By Lynne Roberts

Robbie will never forget the year he turned thirteen. That was when he had to hide his best friend Kevin in his bedroom cupboard and keep it a secret not only from his family, but a succession of foreign visitors as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynne Roberts
• Release date: Feb 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927241073

Lynne Roberts

Lynne is a writer, musician, dance teacher and porcelain painter, among other things. She lives on an orchard in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand where she breeds donkeys and collects grandchildren. Lynne has written copious numbers of educational teaching resources from pre-school through to tertiary level. She writes story books and fantasy fiction for children and poetry for children and adults, always with a strong vein of humour. Lynne also writes musicals for which she composes the original music.

Book preview

The Year I turned Thirteen and Broadened My Mind

By Lynne Roberts

Published by Liberty Publications at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts

ISBN 978-1-927241-07-3

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

Contents

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

Chapter 5.

Chapter 6.

Chapter 7.

Chapter 1.

I’ll never forget the year I turned thirteen – that was the year we got foreigners. My friend Kevin says I make it sound like it was some sort of disease. Well it wasn’t a disease really, more like a curse.

It started innocently enough. My older sister Amber was complaining as we ate our dinner. That is nothing unusual. Amber is always complaining. She reckons Mum and Dad should let her stay up later at night or go out with friends and not have to be back at reasonable times. She says that if she complains long enough they give way in the end. Not a lot, usually, but a bit anyway. Amber says I should be grateful to her as she is the one who does all the hard work complaining so that when I want to do something its, oh that’s fine, Robbie.

Amber says I get to stay up later than she did when she was my age but I just say that is because I’m a boy and it’s well known that boys can stay up later than girls. About this point she usually hits me and I have to be very cunning to get in a quick hit back before I get told off for hitting a girl. Honestly! When she started it!

So Amber was complaining away and this time it was about travelling. Her friend Julia was going to Fiji for the holidays with her parents and Amber wanted to know why we couldn’t go to Fiji as well.

My father said We can’t afford it.

Amber suggested he could borrow the money and pay it back later. This didn’t go down too well because Amber always runs out of pocket money and asks for an advance. She’s never in living memory been able to pay any of it back and I think she’s in debt for the next seven years anyway.

Dad raved on about how terrible an example that would be and why he had the misfortune to have children with no sense of economy, heaven alone knew. I thought that was a bit unfair because I don’t get into debt as much as Amber does. My problem is that she borrows from me and faithfully promises to pay me back then never does. Or she says she’ll do something for me instead – like let me listen to her CD collection, only she’s always hogging the stereo herself so it never happens. She even offered to do my homework for me once when I complained about having no spending money, but she did it in her writing which is so much neater than mine it was obvious I hadn’t done it. So I ended up with a detention and still no money.

Amber said that the benefits of travel were well known as they broadened the mind.

I asked what broadening the mind meant. Dad sort of coughed and said it should be obvious which meant that he had no idea either.

Mum said, It means that you expand your horizons.

Dad and I both looked blank at this so she went on to tell us that by understanding and learning more about the way other people live we enjoy our