My mother provided me with an invoice when I was twenty. It was essentially a bill for raising me. At the time, in the early nineties, it was about R1 200,000. 

Imagine the possibilities! Would more people be prepared to add to over-population if they considered it a financial investment? The "raising loan" would be paid back just in time for their pensionable years. Think of it as a pre-student loan. Imagine how fucked those would be who had to pay back a student loan as well. Would payback of the raising loan be postponed until the human involved had completed their studies? I’d continue to my post doc…fuck her!

At the time I was no longer close to my mother and perhaps she felt entitled to reimbursement as I was no longer the lost child who constantly stayed at her side worshipping her, failing to recognise the profound anxiety that the relationship perpetuated in me at that time. My mother had a uniquely subjectively world view shared only by herself – some might call it a nut job - and what seemed to be the norm for me as I grew up later proved to be somewhat aberrant behaviour.

My mother had two primary goals in life. The one was to be a prima donna schnorre - frugal to the zenith. The other was to be a first class bitch. She succeeded at both by providing me with my first pro-forma invoice.